Chaitén Volcano Erupts after 6500 years - Scientific Event

Scientists Pierce Veil of Clouds to 'See' Lightning Inside a Volcanic Plume

 

Researchers hit the jackpot in late March, when, for the first time, they began recording data on lightning in a volcanic eruption--right from the start of the eruption.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html 
Using a multi-station, ground-based Lightning Mapping Array, the scientists advanced our understanding of electrical activity during a volcanic eruption.
Portable Lightning Mapping Arrays are now set up in several areas of the country, and are becoming increasingly used by meteorologists to issue weather warnings.
The arrays have been deployed at volcanoes only twice before.
Thousands of individual segments of a single lightning stroke can be mapped with the Lightning Mapping Array, and later analyzed to reveal how lightning initiates and spreads through a thunderstorm, or in a volcanic plume.
When Alaska's Redoubt Volcano started rumbling in January, a team of researchers hurried to set up a series of the arrays.
When the volcano erupted on March 22 and 23, 2009, the arrays returned dramatic information about the electricity created within volcanic plumes, and the resulting lightning.
"For the first time, we had the Lightning Mapping Array on site before the initial eruption," said scientist Sonja Behnke of New Mexico Tech.
"The data will allow us to better understand the electrical charge structure inside a volcanic plume," said scientist Ron Thomas of New Mexico Tech. "That should help us learn how the plume is becoming electrified, and how it evolves over time."
Bradley Smull, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research, said the information will give scientists insights into the electrical mechanisms in both plumes above active volcanoes, and in lightning spawned in thunderstorms.
NSF awarded New Mexico Tech a grant to study volcanic lightning in 2007, with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the Alaska Volcano Observatory as collaborators.

"With data from the Lightning Mapping Array, new details of volcanic plume lightning will emerge," Smull said. "The opportunity for stand-alone analysis, and comparisons with last year's similar observations of Chaiten Volcano in Chile, will tell us much more about this phenomenon."