Characterization of Fluid Oscillations at Kilauea Volcano Through Time-Dependent Modeling of Seismic Displacements from Rockfall Events

Abstract:

Beginning with the opening of a summit vent in 2008, Kilauea’s (Hawaiʻi) summit eruption has exhibited frequent rockfalls from the crater walls into the active lava lake. These events perturb the lake surface, causing vigorous outgassing and sometimes explosions. A network of broadband seismometers records these events as a combination of high-frequency, long-period, and very long period (VLP) oscillations. The VLP portion of the signal has varied in period from 20-40 s since the summit vent opened and has a duration of 10-15 min. These seismic signals reflect the coupling of fluid motion in the conduit to elastic wall rocks. Oscillatory flow can be quantified in terms of the eigenmodes of a magma-filled conduit. Wave motion is affected by conduit geometry, multiphase fluid compressibility, viscosity, and pressure dependent H2O and CO2 solubility. Background stratification and a large impedance contrast at the depth where volatiles first exsolve gives rise to spatially localized families of conduit eigenmodes. The longest period modes are sensitive to properties of bubbly magma and to the length of the conduit above exsolution (which is set by total volatile content).

To study the VLP events, we linearize the conduit flow equations assuming small perturbations to an initially magmastatic column, accounting for non-equilibrium multiphase fluid properties, stratification and buoyancy, and conduit width changes. We solve for conduit eigenmodes and associated eigenfrequencies, as well as for the time-domain conduit response to forces applied to the surface of the lava lake. We use broadband records of rockfalls from 2011-2015 that exhibit consistent periods along with lake level measurements to estimate conduit parameters. Preliminary results suggest that VLP periods can be matched with volatile contents similar to those inferred from melt inclusions from Halemaumau explosions. We are currently conducting a more thorough exploration of the parameter space to investigate this further.