British scientists have been awarded funding to develop an advanced warning system to guard against exploding volcanoes.

Physicists from St Andrews University will use the �250,000 grant to develop a device which can give hazard warnings to people living nearby.

The award from the Natural Environment Research Council is part of a �300,000 project also involving volcanologists from Reading and Lancaster.

The funding will help the scientists study, measure and model the collapse of lava "domes", the great mounds of rock that are created when new magma is forced up through the volcano, such as the one at Montserrat in the West Indies.

Physicists from St Andrews will work on the device

A spokesman for St Andrews University explained the inherent danger with the phenomenon.

"Eventually these domes become unstable and collapse, resulting in a pyroclastic flow of deadly hot rocks and ash, which pours down the mountainside obliterating anything in its path," he said.

"The mechanisms for how these domes grow and subsequently collapse are currently not well understood."

The British team plan to build a new type of surveying instrument which combines radar and thermal images working at millimetre wavelengths.

Dr Jim Lesurf, of the St Andrews School of Physics and Astronomy, said: "The radar will generate high resolution contour maps of the dome while the thermal imager will image the temperature across the dome."

Hazard warning

Volcanologists from the UK project aim to use these maps of the dome's shape and temperature to work up sophisticated computer models.

They hope this will lead to a better understanding of how domes grow and collapse, offering better hazard warning for populations living nearby.

The technology being developed is derived from military use and Dr Duncan Robertson of St Andrews said: "The team at St Andrews have wide experience of developing high performance instruments both for scientific and defence applications.

"While active volcanoes might seem remote to most people in Britain, there are millions of people worldwide who live near them and would benefit from improved hazard warning."