Volcanic Ash Advisory from Darwin

The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre Darwin issued a code "Orange" warning for New Britain in the South West Pacific on 31 May 2010. The advisory consists of a text message and map of the ash plume from a volcano identified from satellite imagery.

There are nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres covering most of the world and usually located in the national meteorological offices of countries near areas of volcanic activity. The Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre is run by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and is located in Darwin, near the volcanically active areas of Indonesian, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.

As with Tsunami warnings, the Volcanic Ash Advisory messages are formatted as upper case English text. One exception is that a web address is included in the message in lower case. This could be a problem for systems which handle only upper case. The message indicates the URL should be lower case, but this is human readable only. Sample message format:

IDD41290
VA ADVISORY
DTG:  20100531/1627Z
VAAC:  Darwin

VOLCANO:  Ulawun  0502-12
PSN:  S0503 E15120
AREA:  New_Britain SW_Pac
SUMMIT ELEV:  2334M

ADVISORY NR:  2010/44
INFO SOURCE:  MTSAT-1R
AVIATION COLOUR CODE:  ORANGE
ERUPTION DETAILS:  VA PLUME TO FL100 LAST OBS 70NM TO W AT 31/0430Z.

OBS VA DTG:  31/1630Z
OBS VA CLD:
SFC/FL100 S0520 E15130 - S0515 E14955 - S0420 E14955 -
S0440 E15130 - S0520 E15130 MOV W 10KT

FCST VA CLD +6HR:  31/2230Z
SFC/FL100 S0520 E15130 - S0515 E14950 - S0420 E14955 -
S0440 E15130 - S0520 E15130
FCST VA CLD +12HR:  01/0430Z
SFC/FL100 S0520 E15130 - S0515 E14940 - S0415 E14940 -
S0440 E15130 - S0520 E15130
FCST VA CLD +18HR:  01/1030Z
SFC/FL100 S0520 E15130 - S0525 E14940 - S0405 E14940 -
S0435 E15130 - S0520 E15130

RMK:  VA PLUME NOT IDENTIFIABLE ON THE LATEST SAT IMAGERY,
BUT EXPECTED TO BE IN AREA.  Graphic at [lower case]
http://www.bom.gov.au/info/vaac/advisories.shtml
NXT ADVISORY:  NO LATER THAN 20100531/2230Z

From: "New_Britain SW_Pac",Volcanic Ash Advisory,
Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre Darwin, 31 May 2010.