Thanks to Prosper Ayabagabo from Rwanda Meteo, we captured the wind conditions at the time Nyiragongo emitted a volcanic plume on the 14th of March 2024. We actually retwitted the post by Radio Okapi.
The images below are based on data from the GEFS on which Prosper performed a dynamical downscaling using the WRF model. The results are on the 4 km grid scale and the wind magnitudes are in m/s. The two triangles are the positions of Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira.
Assuming that the wind magnitude at the time was between 1-6 m/s and noting that the plume was strongly deflected, we can make a rough estimate of the volume flux Q emitted by taking u_wind=u_plume and a plume width half the lava lake diameter ~500 m. This gives Q= u_wind x b^2 =(6-10) x 500^2=1,500,000-2,500,000 m^3/s.
Thanks a lot, Prosper. Awesome work.
