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Abstract

In late 2015, Mount Etna experienced an increase of volcanic activity at its four summit craters, which was initially characterized by strombolian activity and intermittent ash emissions. However, during the first days of December, a more powerful activity resulted in the occurrence of four sequential paroxysmal episodes at the main and oldest crater, Voragine. To investigate the temporal evolution of this particular eruptive activity and its associated response in terms of ground deformation, we have analyzed continuous high-frequency GNSS data from stations of the Etnean GPS Network. The 1 Hz sampled data was processed in kinematic mode using the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) solutions of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) next generation geodetic analysis and data processing software, GIPSYx. In order to assess the reliability of the GIPSYx high-rate solutions, we have compared the results with the ones obtained using the open-source software package PRIDE PPP-AR by the GNSS Research Center of Wuhan University. The criterion of this comparison is mainly focused on the spectral analysis of the responses time series generated by the two packages in order to assess whether volcano-related signals, i.e., displacement signals are detectable at high frequencies, with the goal of performing a joint analysis with volcano-seismic data.