Predicting the dispersion of volcanic ash from 2013 eruption of Sakurajima, Japan

Mt. Sakurajima in kagosima, japan is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. On 18 August 2013, the Sakurajima volcano recently went into the largest scaled eruption with a huge plume of volcanic ash. Therefore, the concern arises if this considerable amount of ashes might flow into the Korea peninsula as well as Japan. In this paper, we performed numeric experiment to analyze how volcanic product resulted from the Sakurajima volcano has impacted on Korea. In order to predict the spread pathway of ash, The Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model and United Model (UM) data has been used and 17th September 2013 has been selected as observation date since it is expected that the volcanic ash would flow into the South Korea. In addition, we have detected ash dispersion by using optical Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite- Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (COMS-GOCI) images. As the results, we come to a very satisfactory conclusion that the spread pathway of volcanoes based on HYSPLIT model are matched well with ash dispersion area detected from COMS-GOCI satellites image.