“We sent ten Boeing 747 and Airbus 340 jets on transfer flights from Munich to Frankfurt,” Lufthansa spokesman Klaus Walther told the paper. The planes were moved in order to be in the most useful place once the ban is lifted, he explained.
“Our machines flew to a height of 24,000 feet, or around 8,000 metres. In Frankfurt the machines were examined by our technicians. They didn’t find the slightest scratch on the cockpit windscreens, on the outer skin nor in the engines.”
“The flight ban, which is completely based on computer calculations, is causing economic damage in the billions. This is why, for the future, we demand that dependable measurements must be available before a flight ban is imposed.”
Source: “the Local”
At left: the model from the Met Office used to look at dispersion.
The Nuclear Accident Model (NAME) was originally developed after the nuclear accident in 1986 at Chernobyl, which highlighted the need for a capability to predict the spread and deposition of radioactive material released into the atmosphere. The model has continued to be developed and is now applied to a wide range of atmospheric pollution problems, ranging from emergency responses to daily air-quality forecasts.
Over the years, NAME has been applied to a number of atmospheric releases, including radioactive releases, the Kuwaiti oil fires, major industrial fires and chemical spills, and two major volcanic eruptions that occurred in Iceland. Both of these eruptions resulted in aircraft having to be re-routed to avoid potentially dangerous ash clouds. An example of the volcanic ash guidance provided to the aviation community is shown in Figure 1.
Source: NWP Gazette
Here is what Professor Jerom Ravetz of Oxford has to say about the issue (via email):
Interim contribution to the Post-Normal Science debate.
Considering the effects of the Icelandic volcano on air transport, we seem to have:
- Facts Uncertain: how thin must the dust be, for it to be safe enough for flying?
- Values in Dispute: Regulators wanting safety at all costs, others needing to get flying now.
- Stakes High: Crippling costs to industry, versus big risks to aircraft and people.
- Decisions Urgent: Every day the immediate costs mount, and the long-term costs grow.
Is this analysis an invitation to scientists to cheat? Some of my critics would say so, and perhaps even some of my supporters as well!
h/t to WUWT readers Nigel Brereton and Bernd Felsche
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A BA 747 from Kuala Lumpur to Perth went through a cloud of volcanic ash from Java’s Galunggung volcano. There are several incidents where inflight loss of power has occured from volcanic clouds. Shortly after the BA incident, a SQ 747 returned to Singapore after losing two engines. In 1989 a KL 747 lost all four after Alaska’s Mount Redoubt erupted. These all were clearly tied back to the volcanic ash and the havoc they play on engines, windscreens, and the airframe in general. Certainly different from the TWA incident, though just as tense for the crew.
Just remember that models are one thing and one thing only: a guess. And not very good guesses for complex situations like the planet system.
>>>Facts Uncertain: how thin must the dust be, for it to be safe enough for flying?
And not forgetting:
Testing banned: a government agency too cowardly to allow proper testing to take place, so we still do not know the safe levels of contaminant that we can fly though safely. But we are going to fly anyway.
And all in the name of Health and Safety !!!!!!
.
“Challenger O-Rings worked fine, until they didn’t. The computer simulations are the best tool available.”
LOL!!!
The O-rings failed several times and the reasons for failure were well-known. Had you taken the time to study the Challenger Accident, you’d have known this.
http://www.mahal.org/articles/space/1995/12/the-space-shuttle-challenger-accident/page/1
In fact, the Shuttles could have kept flying if the environmental parameters for the o-ring issues were mitigated by flying only when it was warm and when there was little wind shear!!!
Here in the US, in Texas, Southwest Airlines is famous for routing its commuter flights around bad weather, which covers the state of Texas like acne on a teenager. They use radar, pilot reports, and dispatchers to make this work. Sometimes they fly at 10,000 feet or loop out over West Texas or into Louisiana to make it work.
I’ll bet a few tweaks to radar could give the Europeans the data they need to route the flights properly. Or a few data flights run at night would give them the data they need during the day.
Eurocontrol is overreacting and rather than come up with a testable model for sampling and deciding when and where to fly, they are just saying no. The real problem is that they just do not know – they could send flights into areas where there is ash because they have no data. None.
Actually, all the NASA engineers at the time warned against launching in the sub-freezing weather, as the brittleness of the rings at those temps was well known. NASA went with the “it hasn’t happened yet, so it probably won’t happen” decision-making process, which also served them well with Columbia (ice impacts haven’t been a problem so far…).
@Jimmy Haigh
Hmmm let’s look at some of the names here…
Mr. Olaf Selfoss translates to Olaf Self-Ourselves which is true since Olafson is Olaf’s son
Helmut Schnellerflugzoeg translates to “slow airplane”
Professor David Sonnenbaum (the climate specialist) translates to “solar tree”
etc…
Sorry, the Americans won’t understand the context but i just have to say this…
science post-normale : douze points
circulation aérienne allemande : nul points
Elementary my dear Watson, when in doubt, start the propeller and measure the dust, I would never trust a computer proggy with my live
Facts Uncertain: only trust what you can see and feel
Values in Dispute: only trust what you can see and feel
Stakes High: only trust what you can see and feel
Decisions Urgent: only trust what you can see and feel
Schneller flug zoeg: faster flight Zoeg.
Schneller flug zog: faster flight took
Schneller flug zug: faster flight train
Google’s translation, certainly not mine. Schnellerflugzoeg, in Google, links only to this page here at WUWT.
Any information available on differences in ash properties between basaltic and andesitic and rhyolitic volcanos and their affect on aircraft engines? Volcanic glass with basaltic composition may affect aircraft differently to glass with more silicic compositions, more commonly associated with explosive eruptions-think Pinotubo-andesite/dacite. I would anticipate that basaltic glass would have a higher melting temperature for instance and may hence not adhere as readily to engine components as glasses with lower melting points. Perhaps an opportunity for someone to do a PhD.
guys, don’t bite on this post “RajKapoor(08:20:17)”.
my guess: some AGW guy trying to get sceptic community look bad for treating to some hoax as real. sit tight. just so you know, the real raj kapoor is a dead Movie actor from india
It is much worse than we in UK plc thought. The jokers at the Met have not carried out any measurements of the concentration of ash?
Well done Watts Up With That, again you are in there before the MSM
Jon (08:06:53) :
> Better safe than sorry!!!
Absolutely! While we’re at it, lets evacuate all areas that might be impacted by a volcanic explosion (Maybe not Yellowstone, too big) or earthquake (especially New Madrid, the St. Louis area is so not ready). Hurricanes and tornadoes are easy – everyone gets out of the way of those, right?
While those are USA examples, the Italian & Crete volcanoes, all tectonic plate boundaries, are geologic risks.. Ban smoking, driving at speeds lethal to pedestrians, electricity, and fire are all avoidable risks. Hospitals too – the death rate in hospitals is enormous!
Better safe than sorry!
This whole volcanic ash aviation article was posted by Dr. Ravetz in order to clarify a real world example of PNS. The idea is that this incident is supposed to meet all the criteria for PNS – facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent. Yet, when we deconstruct the volcanic ash incident in the framework of PNS, we find the problem the authorities are facing is a problem of their own making.
Facts are uncertain because, despite 19 years since the volcanic ash symposium, no science was ever done to ascertain them. The facts in question, as already pointed out, are the concentrations of airbourne volcanic dust that constitute a risk and the dataset of concentrations against engine wear. By ignoring this vital research, we are guaranteeing that facts will remain uncertain for ever and are now forced into an artificial zero tolerance argument.
So rather than being a methodology, PNS in this example turns out to be no more than an observation that “facts are uncertain” and we need to make a decision anyway. If we try and apply PNS to climate science, we don’t uncover any neglect to ascertain facts – quite the opposite. What we do find however, is that the assertions of “high stakes, values in dispute and decisions urgent,” are themselves in dispute. So PNS doesn’t apply even by its own definitions.
Maybe an appropriate example will be found that exactly fits into the PNS format, but I suspect that PNS will continue to recede into the distance becoming more and more emphemeral and irrelevant, much like “Aristotlean” science.
Youtube video from Norwegian Met. Office maps/model.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-4TB47N3_Y (Apr 18)
Yellow(orange) indicates ash that has fallen by itself, red- ash that has fallen as a result of precipitation, and black where the ash cloud is at that moment in time.
from The Map Room
http://www.mcwetboy.net/maproom/2010/04/eyjafjallajoeku_1.php
Ash cloud forecasts at-
http://mapped.at/volcano/
Oh, and Schneller Flugzeug = faster aircraft. Some people do have predestinated names, right?
JD (09:57:38) :
RajKapoor (08:20:17), is that chain of emails real or someone’s idea of a joke (hoax)?
If real, at least chcking the sources, it desrves a new post. It would be more important than Climate Gate!
Give the man a cigar!
Don’t forget to included fear of litigation in the equation. The lawyers will line up like vultures if an aviation accident can be blamed on the volcanic ash — particularly if it involves a spectacular crash with major loss of life.
“Manufacturers of engines and aircraft can, through testing, observe the behaviour of exposure to ash, and recommend operating cycles to minimise damage if exposure is inevitable.”
Manufacturers already do things like toss frozen chickens into test engines to simulate bird strikes. In one test at Pratt and Whitney the test tech left the ladder up against the engine, engine sucked the ladder in and spit it out the back, engine still ran.
Any ‘foreign body’ injected into an engine is going to impact engine life. The question for airlines is the balance between the increased maintenance costs and the lost revenues of not flying.
Flying thru a hail storm isn’t a good idea either. It happens.
There are a couple of questions
What level of ash is likely to cause an engine failure
What level of additional maintenance cost an airline is willing to accept
Then for twin engine aircraft, what are the acceptable landing options.
I.E. A 747 which loses a single engine can continue indefinitely, a twin engine plane that loses a single engine needs to find a place to land.
On transatlantic flights, the place to land is Iceland.
real data doesn’t count! Models are “science”. Anyone who questions them will be punished.
Computer models need to be constantly checked with reality, so one would hope that this is an excellent opportunity to improve the models. Would they allow a plane to fly when the model said it was ok, but direct measurements said not? I think the quote from the writers of yes minister applies. A bureaucracy has the engine of a mini and the breaks of a rolls royce. Everybody has the power to say no, but nobody has the power to say yes. I would have thought insurance would be an issue, but really if a computer model is shown to be inacapable of making a better prediction than the better of a linear extrapolation from known points and an experienced human it should be scrapped and not referred to again until it can. It would be interesting to know how they tested it to demonstrate it was fit for purpose. Considering the effort required to prove something as deterministic as a billing system is working as specified, one would hope that was the major part of the model development costs. You can’t come up with perfect test cases, but surely experienced model developpers can come up with a metric to measure its accuracy against known historic events. %ge of blocks with %ge ash within acceptable tolerance perhaps, ideally calibrated for what it is intended to be used for. Run each model against known previous events and reject a model which didn’t pass the agreed criteria. If the ability to predict new datasets did not improve, funding should be stopped, or at least a plausible explanation of why future funding would improve its reliability. How do they currently determine if it works as specified, never mind if it has any predictive capability?
This whole mess is simply the application of that European invention the Precautionary Principle taken to some absurd extreme. Or to quote Will S. “Much To Do About Nothing”. (unless you happen to live in Iceland) It is not Post Normal or anything else except the orthodoxy of ignorance, all to often that is the Normal. That my friends has been with humanity since day one. It is simply just another example of a little knowledge being miss used and miss interpreted and therefore dangerous. That’s my cynical model of the world, my story and by god I’m sticking to it.
The gross stupidity of the ban was that they also banned Piston Engined aircaft, you know those ones they show taking all that film of Volcanoes and flying people up to the top of them.
” Daniel H (10:16:43) :
[…]
Helmut Schnellerflugzoeg translates to “slow airplane””
Sounds like mock german; “Schnelles Flugzeug” would be “Fast airplane”. But nobody i know is called Schnellesflugzeug, largely because german surnames were defined and fixed before the invention of fast airplanes (you might find someone called Stahlbock which means “steel bracket”).
Those piston engined aircarft could have been fitted out to actually measure the density of the dust cloud ove rthe whole of Europe at all the different heights up to 25,000 ft at least.