RADAR MONITORING OF POPOCATÉPETL VOLCANO: PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF ASH OBSERVATIONS
Remote sensing techniques are among the safest methods for monitoring a volcano. One of such techniques is the use of a weather radar to monitor and quantify the volcanic ashes expelled during an eruption. In 2019, the National Autonomous University of Mexico acquired a Doppler polarimetric WR-2100 Furuno radar to monitor the volcanic ashes from the Popocatépetl volcano. This volcano is located approximately 60 km from downtown Mexico City, with over 25 million people living within a 100 km radius. The radar is installed at approximately 4000 masl inside the Popocatépetl-Iztaccihuatl National Park and has been operational from 2020 to 2023. In 2024 and 2025, it underwent a major maintenance service. To date, it has generated 8.5 Tb of raw data, and some software has been written in Python and PowerShell to cleanse, process and visualize this data in real time. In this work, we outline the general setup of the radar and the data, as well as the preliminary results of the observations, the algorithm used to clean the ground clutter of the signal and a preliminary altitude of one explosion. Additionally, we present the most significant volcanic events we have observed, along with a successful example of real-time monitoring that ultimately led to issuing a warning alert, which had positive consequences for public safety.