As a follow up to our 4/19 story about ash cloud modeling:
Ash cloud models – overrated? A word on Post Normal Science by Dr. Jerome Ravetz
I offer below a compendium of articles from Benny’ Pieser’s CCNET and GWPF of the UK
Above:
The Met Office has been blamed for triggering the “unnecessary” six-day closure of British airspace which has cost airlines, passengers and the economy more than £1.5 billion.–The Telegraph 19 April, 2010
…
Global airlines have lost about $1.7bn of revenue as a result of the disruptions caused by the Icelandic volcanic eruption, a body has said. Giovanni Bisignani, chief executive of IATA, criticised governments for the haste with which they closed airspace, and called on them to provide compensation to the airlines. “Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts. Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong.” —BBC, 21 April 2010
…
We are becoming a risk-averse society and that is dangerous. You cannot run a national economy on the precautionary principle; indeed, the sound position is to embrace as much risk as possible. Societies that embrace risk, such as the United States and recently the UK, tend to thrive, while those that seek to minimise risk, such as Britain during the 1970s, tend to wither. Financial capital is now fleeing Britain, heading to the Far East. A long queue of companies is chasing the money, including our own Prudential, which is floating a business on the Chinese stock market. The true venturers are over there, not in Britain. —The Times, 21 April 2010
…
Rational decisions have to be taken on the basis of some empirical understanding of the risks involved, and on the balance between risk and reward (or the cost of avoiding risk). Exposing the nonsense and muddle of the so-called precautionary principle is an essential part of the GWPF’s declared mission ‘to bring reason, integrity and balance to a climate debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant’. If the argument now raging over the policy response to the volcanic ash clouds assists in achieving this, it will demonstrate that ash clouds, too, have a silver lining. —The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 April 2010
Priceless!!!
The Governments should let people take risks.
Fly and maybe die – just sign this release form.
Whatever… probably only one to five planes would have ruined their engines and crashed. How many people dead ? 600? 1000? A lot more than that die just of lung cancer from smoking every year. Throw in dying from heart disease from being overweight, and fatal car crashes from bad driving habits, and this “reckless flying” choice is just a drop in the bucket compared to other choices that kill lots more people.
Human evolution has so little to work with today – the Governments shouldn’t get in the way.
Credit to the Met Office for the good models but where was a commonsense risk assessment. This is a serious matter when hundreds of lives are at stake but it seems as if it took a long time for the panic to settle
I like Lord Lawsons take on it,
http://thegwpf.org/news/848-uk-government-too-cautious-over-ash-cloud-minister-admits.html
I don’t think you can blame the Met models this time. It is not the case that the models were “showing” ash for 6 days over the UK and Europe that did not exist. The reality is more complex. Ash clouds were dynamic, at times moving east over Siberia leaving the UK clear, and at times moving directly over the UK. It was the constantly moving nature of the clouds that made it impossible to find windows of opportunity. Indeed, one of the repeated mantras to be heard over the 6 days was “the situation is dynamic.”
The true problem was caused by lack of regulations on what are safe vs unsafe thresholds for ash cloud density. This was something that was eventually thrashed out by regulators, and it turns out the threshold is a lot higher than the ash cloud acheived at any time over Europe and the UK. So, the models showed the ash clouds to be real, but the regulators didn’t know they presented no danger.
Seems like a real dilema, ash damage can only be assertained by engine inspection after landing. The location where any damage occured is not known, and is moving.
Heavy ash on a busy airway, could flame-out 5 jets that would all be looking to make emergency landings, possibly on the same runway at the same time.
Stay out of the ash!
Where ever it is?
There were some prior experiences with engine failures due to volcanic ash. I think the Met Office made the right decision.
I do think they should have done some testing to see just how dangerous (and how long). We’d all be upset had a passenger plane crashed because of the ash.
Follow-up to Anthony – two daylight looks a day, a few hours after the satellite overflight, and still no proof that the clear-looking parts are safe, is still inadequate. And the Met Office among others were using that imagery and more.
Risk assessment is not within the met services’ purview – they aren’t on the radio or phone telling BA or its pilots where to fly. That’s a job for the transport ministries and their operational arms (national ATC or Eurocontrol). They are the interface to the airlines and pilots. The met services provide their best estimates based on the (inadequate) data and forecasts at hand. It is the up to the transport ministries and their operations to assess the risks and unknowns and devise a plan.
The Met Office (or NWS in my case) tells me there’s a 70% chance of rain tomorrow. Does it tell me not to pour my concrete? Of course not. I make that choice.
REPLY: No dispute there that the Met Office doesn’t make the decision, but if you have the “International Concrete Safety Agency” (fictional) telling you that you can’t make that choice because of the forecast, would you not be peeved if the forecast was wrong and the sun was shining and you had to pay idle workers and explain to customers why you can’t complete the job? – I know I would be.
Odd thing here is that we have many more instances of airplanes flying in the presence of dangerous thunderstorms, but they give the pilot the choice. We have ships at sea that sail in the face of dangerous weather, choice goes to the captain there, perhaps on the advice of dispatch. Point is the companies and captains are allowed to make the risk assessment and choice there. Observation trumps modeling in these cases. They may use the model as guidance, the captain usually gets to make the final decision based on his/her observations, including model input via dispatch.
Why suddenly with ash is the choice taken away in a blanket manner? It seems to me that ash avoidance can be done just as weather avoidance, given proper observations. – Anthony
I love this story.
Models versus reality with enough cost and consequences to hopefully make people think.
I give up!
What’s so damn wrong with modeling computers?
See what I did there?
Henry:
While I can’t vouch for the 1.7 billion pound loss estimate or how it was calculated, you don’t need a super computer to know the airlines don’t make money when they don’t fly.
Some of the business was lost permanently. People still had to man the phones and desks while no revenue came in. Overtime will be paid to try to get things back on schedule.
REPLY: I agree, there’s plenty to bash at the Met Office. Good summary on your part. My issue is overreliance on models and not enough observation. Rapidfire sat imagery may provide a substitute for “ash radar”. Anthony
Not really, the satellite images show you the footprint not the distribution with height that’s why the VAACs are so important. Here’s the MODIS shot from 11:55 Zulu yesterday, it clearly shows an ugly brown cloud of ash extending from the volcano south over the atlantic to the west of Ireland. I would think that no pilot would want to take a chance on flying through that. The point is what flight level is it at?
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2010110/crefl1_143.A2010110115500-2010110120000.500m.jpg
Here’s the result of the Met Office model which matches the image well. The second panel for 12:00 Zulu shows the new plume very well but adds the information that it’s from surface to Flight Level 200, so if you’re a 777 flying at FL350 you’d like your chances, landing in southern Britain might be problematic though.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/vaac/data/VAG_1271741319.png
REPLY: Nobody is suggesting pilots fly through the visible ash, like thunderstorms, they can simply avoid it if they know where it is. You don’t need a model to show you where it is if you can observe it. You don’t need to ground a whole continent if you can follow the plume. -A
i wonder if they used Google? if you type in “volcanic ash aircraft engines” you find this from 1980 mount st helen’s eruption which should give you enough info to start to realise the risk is quite small.
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA366243
can anyone tell me the difference between the desert sandstorms that make my car dirty and the volcano ash? If they wanted to save lives they could have asked to leave the cars at home on sunday.
“stevengoddard (10:11:42) :
If a plane had of gone down, everyone would be screaming for their heads. The Met Office is in a no-win situation, and chose “better safe than sorry.”
Or they could have said “we really don’t know. Our models are not good enough. We need to conduct som tests/sampling, weather ballons, whatever, not modelling to find out…”
Al Gored (12:04:53) :
I love this story.
Models versus reality with enough cost and consequences to hopefully make people think.
So do you think that they should shut down the Alaska VAAC after all it only gives advisories based on computer models?
Personally I’m glad it does run its models and issue the advisories since it caused the plane I was on to divert to avoid the plumes from a Kamchatkan volcano a couple of years ago! Reality in the absence of VAACs is more incidents involving engine flameouts and possibly deaths.
This is how the system works (and is the same for the London VAAC):
AAWU VAAC meteorologists use input from the Alaska Volcano Observatory, satellite pictures, radar imagery and pilot reports to determine if an eruption has occurred and to understand the intensity of the eruption.
An eruption SIGMET is issued to warn pilots about the danger.
One or more computer models are used to forecast ash movement in the atmosphere.
A Volcanic Ash Advisory Statement is issued describing the three-dimensional location of the ash.
SIGMETs and advisories are updated to keep everyone current with the situation.
REPLY: Thanks for proving my point Phil, pilots/dispatch can make the decision, as they should. As you demonstrated with personal experience, they can avoid it. If you can avoid something there is no reason to shut down everything based on model output alone. Don’t fly where the ash is is no more difficult than don’t fly into a hurricane or batch of thunderstorms. Even in severe storm situations, entire swaths of airspace are not closed, they leave it up to the pilots for risk assessment/avoidance. There’s no reason to take a blanket approach if you can track it by observation. Observation trumps modeling. I’ll trust a pilots judgment of a situation over the Met office model and/or a bureaucrat every time. – Anthony
The Times argument is absurd. After 9/11, American and United Airlines both neared collapse. A couple of planes go down, and it is all over for an airline. One 9/11 lawsuit against American Airlines for one passenger was $50 million.
I think the problem lies with the Euro Ninnies and the ICAO regulations and for an important but minor part to the Met Office!
Please read what Oliver North had to say about the subject here:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/hook-line-and-sinker.html
and his most recent publications! They are spot on!
Georgegr (12:47:12) :
It has only been a week. It would be impossible to gather enough data to make an intelligent decision any faster.
REPLY: Nobody is suggesting pilots fly through the visible ash, like thunderstorms, they can simply avoid it if they know where it is. You don’t need a model to show you where it is if you can observe it. You don’t need to ground a whole continent if you can follow the plume. -A
That’s the point, it isn’t visible to the pilot nor always from the satellite, on the MODIS shot it’s only visible where there are no clouds. It’s the VAAC models that give you the three-D picture of where the plume is, without it the pilot is blind. The first indication a pilot gets is often St Elmo’s fire on the windshield caused by static from the ash, followed by pitot instrument problems, engine instability, unusual engine temperature fluctuations and ulimately flameout.
The establishments of VAACs in 1991 to issue reports of this nature is why the number of encounters has decreased. The current criticism based on financial concerns undermines a valuable safety resource and we’ll all be worse off because of it.
As well as being a ‘despised academic’ I’m also a pilot.
stevengoddard (10:11:42) :
If a plane had of gone down, everyone would be screaming for their heads. The Met Office is in a no-win situation, and chose “better safe than sorry.”
Steven: In that case, because the situation has not changed, the aircraft should all remain grounded.
Aye, Bob
I wonder if a photo from space would have made it better. When in 2008 the Chaiten volcano erupted we all saw a lot of pictures taken from space of its ashes crossing the SA continent. What happened this time, was it there a particular interest in stopping all flights in the minds of some EU bureaucrats?
Phil:
I live under where the Met ffice model said there was Ash for 6 days, but I could never detect any by observation on 5 days out of 6.
There was very light dust on my car the first day, but after that absolutely nothing and the sky was, unusually for UK ,crystal clear on a number of days.
So I was surprised when I saw a Met Office scientist state on TV that you wouldn’t wish to fly in UK with current atmospheric ash conditions. That is what he said!
stevengoddard (12:53:53) :
“The Times argument is absurd. After 9/11, American and United Airlines both neared collapse. … ”
And Lockerbie probably caused the collapse of PAN AM, and Flight 400 probably took down TWA. Airlines run on very thin profit margins.
Many posting here have indicated “Better safe than sorry” a sentiment with which I agree. But by the same token, shouldn’t that sentiment apply to the models that suggest human produced CO2 is largely responsible for climate change? And if not, why not?
guys,
stop screaming at the modelers. left to themselves, and given good collection of REAL data, they can model pretty decently. we have good, mathematical and computer tools. it is only when politics get involved, when “represntatives” ( aka political payoffs ) of countries get involved, when fake data is thrown in, when the pre-determined answer is expected……. we have problem.
Ofcourse, Michael Mann … i cannot explain. I think he is not an honest modeler. just a political hack with a Ph.D.