Mt. Etna and the Mediterranean:
The Mt. Etna erruptions seems to have subsided over the last day or so, despite news reports to the contrary - at least as far as a prominent plume is concerned. Here I show a series of Seawifs images over the past five days.
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol_web/satellite/seawifs/med/200107/2001072212_med.jpg
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol_web/satellite/seawifs/med/200107/2001072312_med.jpg
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol_web/satellite/seawifs/med/200107/2001072412_med.jpg
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol_web/satellite/seawifs/med/200107/2001072512_med.jpg
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/aerosol_web/satellite/seawifs/med/200107/2001072612_med.jpg
On the 26th there is no sign of a plume. But note the almost constant dust activity over the Med. Note also the contrasting aerosol over the Black Sea.

The TOMS absorbing aerosol product does not detect any plume from this eruption.
There are a number of sites on the web that cover the Etna eruption. For example, on 22 July when Seawifs sees a very nice plume, TOMS shows nothing:
ftp://toms.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/eptoms/images/aerosol_web/y2001/ea010722.gif
This is probably due to a number of factors. The plume is small compared to the resolution of TOMS (about one degree) and it is at a relatively low altitude (I assume).

The NASA Earth Observatory site has some excellent products:

Ash Plume from Mt. Etna
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=5033

The Continuing Eruption of Mt. Etna
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=5032

DREAM Model:

Slobodan Nickovic [University of Malta,
Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Insular Coastal Dynamics(ICoD)] reports that
they have modified the

DREAM model (4km horizontal resolution) to work with a point source and they ran it for the Mt. Etna eruption. There are two forecast maps and corresponding sat pictures with same valid times (avhrr and seawifs) at: http://www.icod.org.mt/etna/

MISR: David Diner from the MISR team (djd@mail-misr.jpl.nasa.gov or: David.J.Diner@jpl.nasa.gov) sends the following:

Just to let you know, some multi-angle and stereo images of the July 22, 2001 eruption of Mt. Etna are posted as the MISR "image of the week" at http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov. The image will be on the home page for a week, then move to the gallery. Original data are available through the Langley DAAC.

Joseph M. Prospero
Professor and Director
Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
University of Miami
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami FL 33149
Tel: 305-361-4159
Fax: 305-361-4457
jprospero@rsmas.miami.edu