Unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are transforming our ability to study volcanic emissions, allowing unique access to gas plumes that are otherwise too hazardous or challenging to reach. Beyond visual line of sight flights are particularly exciting, allowing us to launch sensors into gas plumes from several kilometres away.
Around our planet, hundreds of volcanoes are constantly releasing gas into the atmosphere, even when not erupting. Over geological time, this volcanic outgassing is a key control on atmospheric composition, climate change, and planetary habitability, but how does volcanic outgassing vary, in chemical composition, in flux, and over what spatial or temporal scales?