Baseline for rainwater chemistry and quality as influenced by Nyiragongo volcano permanent plume, East Africa.

Single rainwater samples were collected in the city of Goma (~1,1 million inhabitants), eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, from January to June 2013 to draw a baseline for rainwater chemical composition and quality as influenced by the permanent plume of Nyiragongo volcano. This was a better period for a baseline as the neighboring Nyamulagira volcano, only 15 km apart, had no important degassing from its central crater, and hence the recorded volcanic influence on the rainwater chemistry was solely from Nyiragongo's lava lake which has been active since May 2002. The baseline for the rainwater chemistry and quality is important for this highly populated region where rainwater is the unique potable water source for the inhabitants of many villages surrounding the volcanoes, and for some of the inhabitants of the city of Goma.

Influence of moisture source dynamics and weather patterns on stable isotopes ratios of precipitation in Central-Eastern Africa.

We report the first δO and δH data of Virunga rainfall in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, situated on the limit between Central and Eastern Africa. The dataset is from 13 rain gauges deployed at Mount Nyiragongo and its surroundings sampled monthly between December 2013 and October 2015. The δO and δH vary from -6.