Eruptive activity at Turrialba Volcano (Costa Rica) has escalated significantly since 2014, causing airport and school closures in the capital city of San José. Whether or not new magma is involved in the current unrest seems probable but remains a matter of debate as ash deposits are dominated by hydrothermal material. Here we use high‐frequency gas monitoring to track the behavior of the volcano between 2014 and 2015 and to decipher magmatic versus hydrothermal contributions to the eruptions. Pulses of deeply derived CO
2
‐rich gas (CO
2
/S
total
> 4.5) precede explosive activity, providing a clear precursor to eruptive periods that occurs up to 2 weeks before eruptions, which are accompanied by shallowly derived sulfur‐rich magmatic gas emissions. Degassing modeling suggests that the deep magmatic reservoir is ~8–10 km deep, whereas the shallow magmatic gas source is at ~3–5 km. Two cycles of degassing and eruption are observed, each attributed to pulses of magma ascending through the deep reservoir to shallow crustal levels. The magmatic degassing signals were overprinted by a fluid contribution from the shallow hydrothermal system, modifying the gas compositions, contributing volatiles to the emissions, and reflecting complex processes of scrubbing, displacement, and volatilization. H
2
S/SO
2
varies over 2 orders of magnitude through the monitoring period and demonstrates that the first eruptive episode involved hydrothermal gases, whereas the second did not. Massive degassing (>3000 T/d SO
2
and H
2
S/SO
2
> 1) followed, suggesting boiling off of the hydrothermal system. The gas emissions show a remarkable shift to purely magmatic composition (H
2
S/SO
2
< 0.05) during the second eruptive period, reflecting the depletion of the hydrothermal system or the establishment of high‐temperature conduits bypassing remnant hydrothermal reservoirs, and the transition from phreatic to phreatomagmatic eruptive activity.
The 2014-2015 Bárðarbunga fissure eruption at Holuhraun in central Iceland was distinguished by the high emission of gases, in total 9.6 Mt SO 2 , with almost no tephra. This work collates all ground-based measurements of this extraordinary eruption cloud made under particularly challenging conditions: remote location, optically dense cloud with high SO 2 column amounts, low UV intensity, frequent clouds and precipitation, an extensive and hot lava field, developing ramparts, and high-latitude winter conditions. Semi-continuous measurements of SO 2 flux with
crateric SO 2 emissions, and electrochemical/nDIR multicomponent gas analyser system (multi-GaS) instruments for measuring CO 2 /SO 2 ratios of excerpts of the volcanic plume. This study aims to quantify the representativeness of excerpts of CO 2 /SO 2 ratios measured by Multi-GaS as a fraction of the whole plume composition, by comparison with simultaneously measured CO 2 /SO 2 ratios using crosscrater Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Two study cases are presented: Telica volcano (nicaragua), with a homogenous plume, quiescent degassing from a deep source and ambient temperature, and Turrialba volcano (Costa Rica), which has a non-homogeneous plume from three main sources with different compositions and temperatures. Our comparison shows that in our "easier case" (Telica), FTIR and Multi-GaS CO 2 /SO 2 ratios agree within a factor about 3 %. In our "complicated case" (Turrialba), Multi-GaS and FTIR yield CO 2 /SO 2 ratios differing by approximately 13-25 % at most. These results suggest that a fair estimation of volcanic CO 2 emissions can be provided by the combination of DOaS and Multi-GaS instruments for volcanoes with similar degassing conditions as Telica or Turrialba. Based on the results of this comparison, we report that by the time our measurements were made, Telica and Turrialba were emitting approximately 100 and 1,000 t day −1 of CO 2 , respectively.
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