Steamboat-Diffuse-Gas-Emissions-JVGR

The objective of this project was to measure the real-time concentration and carbon isotopic measurements of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) before and after a major eruption at Steamboat Geyser, Norris Geyser Basin, WY. Steamboat is the tallest erupting active geyser in the world and has recently entered a phase of high activity. Between 2000 and 2017, 10 eruptions occurred; however, between April 2018 and March 2020, Steamboat erupted more than 85 times with an average of 8 ± 3 (1σ) days between each event. Work to understand this recent spate of eruptions has begun to trickle out in publications (e.g., Reed et al., 2021 and Wu et al., 2020).

However, this study sought to find insight from a time series of gas measurements during an eruption cycle. Ajayi and Ayers (in review) found an anomalous measurement 10-25 minutes prior to the eruption on 12 Jun 2019. This anomalous measurement may in fact be a precursor signal that can alert an approaching eruption.

The data within this repository was collected by the authors listed on this site and was used along with the code (located on GitHub) to reproduce the analysis and visualizations.