Puffin is a coupling of the programs bent (a volcanic plume model; https://vhub.org/tools/bent) and Puff (a volcanic ash transport model) to provide Puffin. For information on how to run puffin, check out  [https://vhub.org/resources/2641/download/PuffinDoc.pdf], which can also be found under the "Supplemental Docs" tab. Both programs are described below. Bent: Bent is a theoretical model of a volcanic plume, based on applying the equations of motion in a plume-centered coordinate system. Bent suggests that the interaction between a volcanic plume and wind causes enhanced entrainment of air and horizontal momentum, plume bending, and a decrease in plume rise height at constant eruption rate. Because of rapid dilution in the high windspeeds of the polar jet, plumes that vary over more than one order of magnitude in mass eruption rate, if injected into the polar jet, may all attain rise heights only slightly different from the height of the core of the jet, ~10 km, as opposed to 17 – 33 km in a still atmosphere. The model outputs plume trajectories and rise heights, as well as pyroclast loadings as a function of height, and can therefore be used to produce input for advection-diffusion and volcanic ash transport models such as tephra2 or puff. Puff: Puff simulates the transport, dispersion and sedimentation of volcanic ash. It requires horizontal wind field data as a function of height on a regular grid covering a region of interest. Puff output includes the location (in 3 dimensions), size, and age-since-eruption of representative ash particles. Puff can also produce gridded data of relative and absolute ash concentration in the air and on the ground. Puff is a fast and efficient research and operational tool for predicting the trajectories of ash particles, which is essential for hazard assessment. Image: After Puff runs, an image is made, visually depicting the ash cloud. Ashxp and ashgmt are used to convert netcdf files into jpgs and pngs. ImageMagick is then used to combine these pictures into an animated gif. Note that puff MUST have ash outputs checked in order to create the animated ash images, because they require the netcdf files.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Marcus I Bursik; Alejandro Uriel Carbonara; Sean Michael Zawicki; Abani Patra; Renette Jones-Ivey (2019), "puffin," https://theghub.org/resources/puffin.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. ash clouds
2. ash transport
3. plume
4. plume and tephra dispersion
5. puff
6. tephra
7. workflow