An initial assessment of short-term eruption forecasting options in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

There are currently no quantitative short-term eruption forecasts based on peer-reviewed and validated models that are operational for New Zealand’s volcanoes. Specific forecasts produced for work-risk assessments are not generally publicised. During a volcanic crisis, eruption forecasts are demanded under high stress and time-restricted conditions. Many forecasting options exist but none are proven as universally viable, with testing and calibration limited to the hindcasting of specific events. Here, we compare the requirements of six methods with currently available data and monitoring capabilities at each of New Zealand’s volcanoes to determine which methods are currently feasible, as well as those options that may be implemented with additional effort or equipment. In New Zealand, the major limiting factor in method selection is the low number of past instrumentally monitored eruptions. This data gap may be filled by carefully selected analogue data from a global volcano set and expert knowledge. Event trees and the failure forecasting method may be set up at most volcanoes with minimal effort, but the latter can only forecast eruption onset time. Expert interpretation is the only method available in New Zealand for any forecast output type.

KEYWORDS:

• Volcano
• forecasts
• uncertainty
• data
• monitoring
• eruption
• hazards

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Steve Sherburn for their review of ESM2: Details of GeoNet data collection, S. Mead for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript, as well as five reviewers and the editor for their insightful remarks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. The time series data in this study were collected from GeoNet through FITS (https://www.geonet.org.nz/data/tools/FITS). Extra Supplementary Files (ESMs) can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19783237.v1 and contain an overview of the twelve monitored volcanoes of New Zealand (ESM1), details of monitoring data collected by GeoNet (ESM2), code exemplar of obtaining FITS data through GeoNet (ESM3), and combination tables for each volcano to visualise relative ease of obtaining specific eruption forecasting parameters using the six forecasting methods (ESM4).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment’s Resilience to Nature’s Challenges Volcano program, New Zealand [contract number GNS-RNC047].