On the transition from strombolian to fountaining activity: a thermal energy-based driver

Since 1999, Mount Etna’s (Italy) South-East crater system has been characterised by episodic lava fountaining. Each episode is characterised by initial strombolian activity followed by transition to sustained fountaining to feed high-effusion rate lava flow. Here, we use thermal infrared data recorded by a permanent radiometer station to characterise the transition to sustained fountaining fed by the New South-East crater that developed on the eastern flank of the South-East crater starting from January 2011. We cover eight fountaining episodes that occurred between 2012 and 2013. We first developed a routine to characterise event waveforms apparent in the precursory, strombolian phase. This allowed extraction of a database for thermal energy and waveform shape for 1934 events. We detected between 66 and 650 events per episode, with event durations being between 4 and 55 s. In total, 1508 (78 %) of the events had short waxing phases and dominant waning phases. Event frequency increased as climax was approached. Events had energies of between 3.0 × 10 6 and 5.8 × 10 9 J, with rank order analysis indicating the highest possible event energy of 8.1 × 10 9 J. To visualise the temporal evolution of retrieved parameters during the precursory phase, we applied a dimensionality reduction technique. Results show that weaker events occur during an onset period that forms a low-energy “sink”. The transition towards fountaining occurs at 10 7 J, where subsequent events have a temporal trend towards the highest energies, and where sustained fountaining occurs when energies exceed 10 9 J. Such an energy-based framework allows researchers to track the evolution of fountaining episodes and to predict the time at which sustained fountaining will begin.