Sulfur dioxide emission rates from Kīlauea Volcano, Hawaii, 2008-2013

Kīlauea Volcano on the Island of Hawai‘i was in a state of nearly continuous eruption from 1983 - 2018. Large amounts of sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) were released from the volcano’s East Rift Zone (ERZ) during the entire eruptive period, and from the Overlook vent at the summit of the volcano from 2008-2018. This data release presents ground-based estimates of SO2 emission rates from the two gas emission sources for the period 2008-2013. For the two-year period 2008-2010, the summit data have been revised from previously published emission rates (Elias and Sutton, 2012). During this era, very high emissions from the volcano’s newly active lava lake led to opaque plumes and challenges in accurately quantifying SO2 column densities and emission rates (Kern and others, 2012, Elias and others, 2018). Our revised estimates take advantage of more modern and robust analysis techniques and represent more accurate values than originally published. SO2 emission rates for the duration of the 1983-2018 eruptive activity are available in a variety of publications listed at the end of this abstract.