Scientists used data from from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) onboard Meteosat satellite to measure the temperature of the lava lake at Nyiragongo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The scientists compared the satellite data with ground data from a thermal camera. This technique was used for the first time during a lava fountain at Mt. Etna in August 2011, by a team from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) in Italy guided by Dr. Gaetana Ganci.
EUMETSAT elaborated: "Dr. Ganci and her colleagues developed an algorithm they call HOTSAT to detect thermal anomalies in the Earth’s surface temperature linked to volcanoes. They calculate the amount of heat energy being given out in a target area based on analysis of SEVIRI images. Combining the frequent SEVIRI images with the more detailed but less frequent images from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), they showed that temperature…
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