An international team of scientists is traveling to the islands of Papua New Guinea this September to study degassing from active volcanoes in remote jungles there.
An international team of scientists is traveling to the islands of Papua New Guinea this September to study degassing from active volcanoes in remote jungles there. Some of these volcanoes are among the most active on Earth, ejecting a significant proportion of global volcanic gases into the atmosphere. The team, led by DCO DECADE (DEep CArbon DEgassing) scientist Brendan McCormick (University of Cambridge, UK) and supported by DCO and NERC COMET (the UK’s National Environment Research Council Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics), will trek through uncharted volcanic lands to deploy novel ground- and unmanned aerial vehicle-based instrumentation at target volcanoes including Rabaul, Ulawan, Pago, and Garbuna volcanoes on the island of New Britain, and Bagana volcano on Bougainville. Working in close collaboration with Rabaul Volcano Observatory, the team, which also includes Roberto D’Aleo (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy), Peter Barry (University of Oxford, UK), Lois Salem (University of Cambridge, UK), and Bo Galle, Santiago Arellano, and Julia Wallius (all at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden), aims to provide the first detailed measurements of carbon degassing from the region.
You can follow the team during the expedition using @pngvolc16 or #pngvolc16 on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. On Saturday, 27 August 2016, team member Lois Salem will appear on Soho Radio London in their Science Mixtape show at 10-11AM (GMT+1).
