Reawakening of Voragine, the Oldest of Etna’s Summit Craters: Insights from a Recurrent Episodic Eruptive Behavior

Paroxysmal explosive activity at Etna volcano (Italy) became very common during the last three decades, rising concern on the civil protection authorities because of its tremendous impact on the local population, infrastructures, viability and air traffic. Between 4 July and 15 August 2024, during the peak of the touristic season when the local population doubles, Etna volcano gave rise to a sequence of six paroxysmal explosive events from the summit crater named Voragine. This is the oldest and largest of the four Etna’s summit craters and normally displays just degassing, with the previous explosive sequences occurred in December 2015 and May 2016. In this paper, we use thermal images recorded by the monitoring system maintained by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Osservatorio Etneo (INGV–OE) and an automatic routine previously tested in order to automatically define the starting and ending time of each episode, the duration, total volume of erupted fluids (gas plus pyroclastic material), erupted volume of pyroclastic material, time-averaged discharge rate (TADR), and height (maximum and average) of the lava fountains. These data allowed us to infer the eruptive processes and gain some insights on the evolution of the explosive sequences useful for hazard assessment.