hunterbishop.com

Thanking you...

well the scale of the NOAA site turns out to be in Dobson Units (times 10). DU measures total SO2 in a 5km column from the ground up to space! Apparently, even an atmospheric scientist would have trouble converting into ppm at ground level.

my take: the red zone in the graph is bad!

Thanks Hunter for posting this. I sent it to my brother who lives down in HOVE.

& now the data we've all been waiting for...real-time ground level SO2 concentrations in ppb by volume...

http://hawaii.gov/doh/air-quality/index.html

one more thing: Federal advisory (mandatory) by DOH whenever
SO2 safety standards are exceeded

http://hawaii.gov/health/environmental/air/cab/cabmaps/pdf/vog_05_02_08.pdf

Very cool, you guys, thanks for this. NOAA says 2 Dobson Units comes in at about 20 parts per billion, but that is a measurement of S02 in the air from ground level to 3-5 kilometers up. As Steve said, t'aint the same as 20 ppb at ground level.

NOAA cautions that their scale maxes out in the red zone at 2 Dobson units, but the actual S02 concentration in the red zone might be much higher. They say the highest they have seen for Hawaii so far was 150 Dobson units in early April, but if you had been looking at their web page that day, it would have appeared as just more red, same as if the measurement were just 2 Dobson units. They say they're working to improve that.

The measurements are taken when the satellite is over Hawaii at about 1:30 p.m. each day local time. It passes over us again in the very early a.m., but I guess it can't get an ultraviolet radiation reading it needs then to make another measurement.

Hunter, sorry, the max they have seen over Hawaii was 115 Dobson units, not the 150 number I sent earlier.

Well no more much "ocean view" anymore in Kona for weeks now.. Most days its so gray, that you can't tell where the sky ends and the ocean begins. They say that kids are wheezing at school. I think lots of trees grown close to the house helps as a kind of an air filter.