Etna in 3D, right now
The real relief and the satellite photo, with what the official sources say right now on top: the ash cloud with its height, the quakes, the stations listening to the mountain, the vents with their latest activity. Then the aircraft flying over Catania, from ADS-B receivers, and the wind at every height from the weather model. Drag to turn, two fingers to tilt.
VAAC Toulouse advisories: every shape is the one written in the advisory, with its time and height. Nothing is drawn in between.
No Catania aircraft with a recent position: positions come from AeroDataBox with the board, every half hour.
Live aircraft and routes: contains information from ADSB.lol, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL); the routes since 3 am can be downloaded under the same licence from /api/aerei-rotte. Flight origin and destination: VRS standing data (CC0).
Vents: positions from INGV references and OpenStreetMap (ODbL), heights from INGV surveys; the activity is summarised in our own words by Trinaka from INGV – Etna Observatory documents, with a link to each original document.
City lights at night: NASA Black Marble 2016 (Suomi NPP VIIRS, via NASA Earth Observatory), provided by NASA GIBS. A composite of the cloud-free nights of 2016, not a live image. We have softened and tinted them (the original data is greyscale) and removed them within 5 km of the summit, so they are not mistaken for lava. We acknowledge the use of imagery provided by services from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), part of NASA’s Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS).
Wind by height over Etna
Where it blows from and how hard, from the plain to cruising height: the model forecast hour by hour and, where aircraft pass, the wind they measure in flight. The wind decides where the ash goes.
| Height | Forecast blows from | Measured by aircraft |
|---|
Forecast: NOAA/NCEP GFS 0.25° model, 06:00 UTC run, read by Trinaka; not an official bulletin. Heights are those of the model’s pressure levels. Measured: wind computed from aircraft in flight over the last 10 minutes (ADS-B), only where they pass.
Official sources: INGV Etna Observatory, VAAC Toulouse (Météo-France), Catania airport, NASA FIRMS. Other sources, named for what they are: aircraft in flight come from volunteers’ ADS-B receivers collected by ADSB.lol, schedules from AeroDataBox, the wind by height is a forecast of the NOAA GFS model, and a press report is marked as such until INGV confirms it. All processed in real time by Trinaka. City lights at night are a 2016 composite image (NASA Black Marble, Suomi NPP VIIRS, via NASA GIBS), not live. Satellite imagery: MapTiler; relief: Mapzen Terrain Tiles.
Etna and flights, flat →Safety point
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