Long-term ash dispersal dataset of the Sakurajima Taisho eruption for ashfall disaster countermeasure

Abstract. A large volcanic eruption can generate large amounts of
ash which affect the socio-economic activities of surrounding areas,
affecting airline transportation, socio-economics activities, and human
health. Accumulated ashfall has devastating impacts on areas surrounding the
volcano and in other regions, and eruption scale and weather conditions may
escalate ashfall hazards to wider areas. It is crucial to discover places
with a high probability of exposure to ashfall deposition. Here, as a
reference for ashfall disaster countermeasures, we present a dataset
containing the estimated distributions of the ashfall deposit and airborne
ash concentration, obtained from a simulation of ash dispersal following a
large-scale explosive volcanic eruption. We selected the Taisho (1914)
eruption of the Sakurajima volcano, as our case study. This was the
strongest eruption in Japan in the last century, and our study provides a
baseline for a worst-case scenario. We employed one eruption scenario (OES)
approach by replicating the actual event under various extended weather
conditions to show how it would affect contemporary Japan. We generated an
ash dispersal dataset by simulating the ash transport of the Taisho eruption
scenario using a volcanic ash dispersal model and meteorological reanalysis
data for 64 years (1958–2021). We explain the dataset production and
provide the dataset in multiple formats for broader audiences. We examine
the validity of the dataset, its limitations, and its uncertainties.
Countermeasure strategies can be derived from this dataset to reduce
ashfall risk. The dataset is available at the DesignSafe-CI Data Depot:
https://www.designsafe-ci.org/data/browser/public/designsafe.storage.published/PRJ-2848v2
or through the following DOI: https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-vw5f-t920
by selecting Version 2 (Rahadianto and Tatano,
2020).
