From ESA (zoomed image below the read more line)
New satellite image of ash spewing from Iceland’s volcano
19 April 2010
In this image taken [at] (14:45 CET) by ESA’s Envisat satellite, a heavy plume of ash from the Eyjafjallajoekull Volcano is seen travelling in a roughly southeasterly direction.
The volcano has been emitting steam and ash since its recent eruptions began on 20 March, and as observable, the emissions continue. The plume, visible in brownish-grey, is approximately 400 km long. Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer instrument (MERIS) acquired this image on 19 April, while working in Full Resolution Mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.
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Here is a zoomed image
Dartmoor Resident (02:51:35) :
they are not worried about the ash that is heavy enough to settle. they worried about the ones that are staying up at 20000+ feet. no one seems to know what the concentrations are.
is there any report of balloons being sent up to measure concentrations and are samples being captured from the 20K-40K altitude?
And if one..just one airbus packed with joyously returning families plunges dirtward,who carries that particular can?
I`m going to suggest the ever increasing wails from the airlines and associated
industries are simply an opening gambit in screwing the european taxpayers for compensation.
It`s quite possible the airlines are as grateful as hell the decisions aren`t theirs to make.
Ágúst,
When I hear the pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull my brain only comprehends it as “amber lager” which has all sorts of wonderful connotations. This got me thinking that maybe the Icelanders should rename the volcano and cash-in on some marketing money from Michelob.
🙂
“Ricardo (00:36:18) :
Re Pete H 10:12pm and others
the reason that jet engines have a problem with volcanic ash …..
(SNIP)
….
Even if each flight through trace volcanic ash only degraded the performance of the engine by on average 1% (say), would you get on the flight?
Considering that an engine costs about $US10 million to overhaul, that would add about $1,000 per short haul ticket (assuming you went the 100 flights) AND on average about 200 flight PER DAY, in Europe would flame out.
I’m afraid until someone invents both a way to real-time find out where the ash is AND an effective way to re-certify the engine after each flight; we will all be at the mercy of ‘mother nature’”
Sorry Ricardo. Even if each flight causes 1% build up, the distribution of build up will always be heavier towards the 90th flight that the 10th flight.
If good maintenance practices (video inspections) are done at proper intervals on at risk aircraft that routinely fly through the ash, the build up can be recorded and tracked. Also ash builds up unevenly and the vibration sensors on the engines will show an increasing trend of inbalance on the rotor which also can be tracked.
Barring a single event that clogs the engine, flight through the plume can be done safely although at an additional cost due to downtime from inspections and maintenance.
Forgive me if I am a little late here as I’ve missed WUWT for a few weeks and somebody may have already raised this question.
I have been expecting to hear crazed (and usually poorly informed) AGW advocates celebrating the grounding of the aircraft because of the reduction in the Greenhouse gas production.
I was wondering if anybody had any idea how much CO2 is likely to have been dumped into the atmosphere by the eruption and how many days or weeks or months etc of average EU aircraft activity it would take release the equivalent amount?
Are there any estimates on the amount of CO2 being emiited by Eyjafjallajoekull?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/20/mystic_met_volcano_model/
Precautionary principle overdone? discuss….
JohnH (23:20:59) :
As mentioned earlier the UK Met Office is coming in for stick for its dust extent forecasting form the EU, telling comment was, we should be concentrating on actual readings not on computer model predictions which have been shown to be faulty.
Where do you get the idea that the VAACs models have been shown to be faulty? On the contrary they have proved to be very reliable and have been responsible for reducing the number of incidents involving eruption plumes.
The models have been verified by ‘actual readings’, don’t believe all the politically (and financially) motivated hatchet jobs in the press.
Translate that to AGW and its sad these same EU officals don’t think the same way, maybe this panic will open their eyes.
I wonder if our civilization hasn’t become too safe? Perhaps our nervous systems are tuned to a band of background threats, and when life is too safe, some percentage of people become prone to hysteria and paranoia?
Just as our immune systems go wacky when there isn’t enough challenge for it, resulting in higher incidence of auto-immune issues, allergies, etc.
Are there any estimates on the amount of CO2…
Sorry hadn’t seen the next post!
This Ash Cloud is having a devastating effect on our Pig Farm in Devon. We had just recovered from the severe winter in which we lost around 75% of our Hogs, that got frozen to death, and we had invested new money into breeding new Hoglets. We had a big fall of ash the last few days and it must have got mixed up in the Hog feed and we’ve had the vet out now for almost 48 hours trying to save them from the contamination, but I fear we have lost over half of our newborm Hogs. A major disaster following the Winter Cold for us here in Devon. Thing is, our business is now critical, but being simple folk from Devon, we can’t retrain for a new job, as we are mostly raised for Farm handling. All this science is so bewiildering, and without many qualifications we can’t even change our simple lives. We don’t understand all this Science stuff, and we need more education I agree. We just don’t understand what is happening and we get no support from Government who just treat us like simpletons. 🙁
P Hearnden (11:50:06) :
This Ash Cloud is having a devastating effect on our Pig Farm in Devon
Got a place left over there for “Piggy Al”?
Be prepared for another MET office roasting very soon regarding their models and advice.
I would guess that the risks from bird strikes must be orders of magnitude greater than the risk from well diffused ash… any one hazard a figure? We don’t ground aircraft until no birds are flying!
The greenies must be having a field day. They can blame Volcano day on Global Warming (well they do everything else) AND Top Gear.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/04/toyota-icelandic-eruption/
http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2010/04/16/1990/
They always said that Top Gear was ruining the planet.
21.58 Tuesday here in London and the planes are flying into Heathrow again!
I have watched 4 go over in the past 10 minutes or so.
In Photos: Lightning electrifies volcano ash
The Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano continues to produce spectacular visual effects
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1708
Top of mind since this eruption started grabbing headlines:
Is this eruption impacting SAOT (Stratospheric Aerosol Optical Thickness)?
Perhaps the media will eventually address this. If anyone has seen the answer to this question being addressed in media reports (mainstream or otherwise) please provide links.
Thank you.
Disaster of 1783
Things could be much worse though. On June 8, 1783, the Laki volcano erupted and remained active for eight months. Its ash cloud reached as high as 15 kilometres. The poisonous dust that rained down on Iceland killed 10,000 people, a quarter of the island’s population at the time.
The Icelandic language even has a word for it: Móduhardbindin, meaning “death by famine caused by poisonous gas”. Domestic animals suffered white spots on their skin and burns on their hooves. The little grass that remained turned yellow and pink. Half of all livestock died from poisoning.
Iceland was not the only country where apocalyptic scenes became reality. In the United Kingdom, the summer of 1783 would go down in history as the “sand summer”. Large swaths of Europe were enveloped in a thick, permanent, haze. The fog rolled over Bergen in Norway first, followed by Prague and Berlin, and finally, Paris and Rome. With visibility at sea extremely limited, ships remained moored in port. By day, a paltry sun emitted little more light than the moon did by night. Only at sunset and sunrise did it turn a deep crimson red.
Extremely hot summers and cold winters followed, causing crops to fail across Europe. Famine ensued. In the UK alone, 23,000 people died from poisoning in the summer of 1783. In the winter that followed an additional 8,000 succumbed to hunger. In 1784, the United States had its coldest winter ever. Even parts of the Gulf of Mexico froze over. The Mississippi river was covered with ice as far south as New Orleans.
The eruption’s effects lasted until 1788. France was plagued by heavy storms. Newspaper reports from the era mention hailstones so big they killed cattle on impact. Harvests failed and famine followed. Grain prices reached record heights. The country’s rural populace in particular, which then accounted for 85 percent of the population, rebelled against the bankrupt French monarchy. The Bastille prison was stormed and the Ancien Régime overturned. France would remain a hotbed of unrest for years, long after the Laki volcano in Iceland had already returned to a deep and long-lasting slumber.
Source: http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2526154.ece/Historic_eruption_on_Iceland_killed_thousands
It could be a whole lot worse!
In Australia we hear:
He says Iceland’s volcanic carbon emissions are good news for plant growth and the current eruptions give an indication of the potential for carbon emissions from future volcanos.
“We are living in a period of volcanic quiescence, as we haven’t had a dirty big eruption since 1912; and this is a small eruption but it is giving us the window into what a very big eruption would be like.”
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/04/volcano-climate-change.html
BlondieBC (06:00:55) : “One of the posters said that this volcanic ash was near 57% silicate, and that sahara sand was near pure silicate. Evidently, pure silicate has a higher melting point”.
Silica is SiO2, which is quartz, which is the main mineral present in sand. There is no concept of “pure silicate” in natural chemistry; it is a meaningless term unless described more fully. Silicates are a complex group of chemicals in which silicon is chemically combined with other elements like oxygen, often with aluminium to make aluminosilicates and often with elements like sodium to make sodium aluminosilicate, of which there can be several related sub-types.
The sand blown from the Sahara has little resemblance to the dust from the volcano, in terms of melting point (SiO2 is fairly high), corrosion, particle size distribution, windscreen abrasion and so on . We are talking about rather different mineral beasts, probably several different major ones in the ash alone.
Joe (05:04:19) :
It might help to be guided by a French scientist who wrote in translation
“All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison….” Paracelsus (1493-1541)”
It is also a guiding priciple, but not a universal one, that humans evolved in environments to which they have adaped and become conditioned. For example, some tribes who have never used ethyl alcohol through not knowing of it, can come to like it, though their tolerance can be lower and the effects of disease greater. It seems to take quite a few generations for the human body to accustom itself to new assaults, via changes such as mutation.
Since humans evolved with nuclear radiation, it should not be regarded as a toxin at ambient level; the same with carbon dioxide re the USA EPA silliness. And, on thread, the fallout of volcanos has been around for a long time and humans ought to have gained some resistance to some of its effects.
LarryD (10:35:02) :
“I wonder if our civilization hasn’t become too safe? Perhaps our nervous systems are tuned to a band of background threats, and when life is too safe, some percentage of people become prone to hysteria and paranoia?
Just as our immune systems go wacky when there isn’t enough challenge for it, resulting in higher incidence of auto-immune issues, allergies, etc.”
Larry, you are right on target. Risk-aversion is one of the curses of modern society, and many of us are blind to the benefits of running a series of modest risks. We somehow see dangers more vividly than we see the benefits of stoical carry-on-regardless.
I am reminded of some sci-fi novel, where mankind was skulking inside a protective dome. The heroes summoned up the courage to venture into the outside world and concluded something like ‘hey, it’s nice out here’.
Our ancestors had to contend with war, pestilence and famine. If we discover one of them forzen in a block of ice and resuscitate him, he’ll observe our comfy cosy lives and tell us that we’ve never had it so good. He’ll say, “What? You see apocalypse in a few lousy tenths of a degree on a dodgy thermometer? What a bunch of Mummies Boys! Maybe you should get out more.”
ALL MAJOR [4 VEI AND HIGHER] GLOBAL VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS BY CENTURY
[LEVEL 5 AND UP (PER VOLCANIC EXPLOSIVITY INDEX OR VEI) IN BRACKETS]
800 -20[3]
900 -10[3]
1000-12[5]
1100 -8[3]
1200 -9[2]
1300-14[3]
1400-13[5]
1500-21[4]
1600-32[12]
1700-35[4]
1800-44[8]
1900-79[12]
2000-?
TOTAL 297[64]
Better record keeping and detection could account for some of the recent increase especially the 1900’s increase when compared to previous eruptions.
There have been 39 volcanoes with active eruptions in 2010. The 39 figure includes eruptions of all VEI levels and not just those of 4VEI and higher as noted above and those very prominent of 5 VEI and over as also noted above [in brackets]
All the above data can be seen at
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
So major type of eruptions can happen any time as we have not had a major eruption [level 6] since Pinatubo in 1991and we had 12 major eruptions [VEI 5 and higher ]during the last century.
I included erroneously the 2000-2009 figures in the 1900 total in my previous post. This post shows it correctly.
ALL MAJOR [4 VEI AND HIGHER] GLOBAL VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS BY CENTURY
[LEVEL 5 AND UP (PER VOLCANIC EXPLOSIVITY INDEX OR VEI) IN BRACKETS]
800 -20[3]
900 -10[3]
1000-12[5]
1100 -8[3]
1200 -9[2]
1300-14[3]
1400-13[5]
1500-21[4]
1600-32[12]
1700-35[4]
1800-44[8]
1900-68[12] (CORRECTED)
2000-11[0] 1 DECADE ONLY (CORRECTED)
TOTAL 297[64]