Animation for the article "In the Wake of the Hayli Gubbi Eruption" by Ukhov et al., 2026.

The animation compares the observed and modeled dispersion of the Haily-Gubbi volcanic plume. The left panel shows MSG-2 SEVIRI natural-color satellite image, in which the volcanic plume is visible as a faint, elongated haze extending northeastward from the eruption site over the Red Sea and the Arabian Peninsula. The right panel shows the WRF-Chem-simulated aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 550 nm. The modeled plume originates from the volcano (red triangle) and follows a similar northeastward transport pathway. The shading indicates AOD magnitude, with higher values near the source and along the plume core. The AERONET site at Nizwa University is marked as a blue circle. Animation illustrates the consistency between the satellite-observed plume and the modeled ash transport in both spatial structure and downwind extent. The animation covers the period from 23 November 2025 06:00 UTC to 24 November 2025 12:00 UTC, using a 4-km horizontal resolution domain over the Middle East with 52 vertical levels up to ~23 km. Volcanic emissions are prescribed using the WRF-Chem v4.8 volcanic emission option (emiss_opt_vol=3) together with aerosol chemistry option chem_opt=402, which explicitly represents SO₂ and 10 ash size bins with gravitational settling. Total emitted masses in the baseline scenario are 1.0 Mt of ash and 0.3 Mt of SO₂. The vertical and temporal structure of the source term is reconstructed using the Plume-traj framework developed for this study, which traces air parcels backwards from the observed plume toward the vent using WRF meteorology. Refer to "In the Wake of the Hayli Gubbi Eruption" by Ukhov et al., 2026, for more details.