Another eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland, another round of air traffic closures.
download large image (3 MB, JPEG)
After more than a week of relatively subdued activity in late April, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano began a fresh round of explosive ash eruptions in the first week of May. On the morning of May 6, 2010, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of a thick plume of ash blowing east and then south from the volcano. Clouds bracket the edges of the scene, but the dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean show in the middle, and above them, a rippling, brownish-yellow river of ash.
Ash clouds like this are impressive to see, and they can have a dramatic influence on air quality and vegetation, including crops. In Iceland, the ash from Eyjafjallajokull has settled thickly on the ground, posing a threat to livestock and wildlife. The risk of engine damage due to ash has grounded European air traffic repeatedly.
Despite their dramatic appearance, however, these ash plumes are insignificant when it comes to long-term affects on global climate. What matters most to the climate isn’t even visible in images like this. For an eruption to have an influence on global climate, the event must be explosive enough to push sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which is above the altitude where rain and snow occur.
Sulfur dioxide turns into tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. These light-colored droplets cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space. Because it doesn’t rain in the stratosphere, the droplets can linger for months or years. Massive eruptions can cool the global average surface temperature by several degrees for several years.
In most cases, though, high-latitude eruptions have little influence on global climate even when they are explosive enough to inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere; the reflective particles rarely have a chance to spread around the globe. Stratospheric air generally rises above tropical latitudes, spreads toward the poles, and then sinks back toward the lower atmosphere at high latitudes.
This circulation pattern means that stratospheric particles from eruptions in the tropics have a better chance of spreading all around the world, while particles from high-latitude eruptions are more likely to quickly sink back to lower altitudes. When they re-enter the troposphere, they are rapidly washed out of the atmosphere by rain and snow. Eyjafjallajokull’s high-latitude location means that its eruption probably won’t influence the global climate significantly.
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References
- Schmidt, G. (2006, May 16). Current volcanic activity and climate? RealClimate.org. Retrieved May 6, 2010.
Story from NASA Earth Observsatory
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kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
May 10, 2010 at 1:15 pm
52F underground is cold. Add the requisite ventilation requirements out in main haulage, and one needs a heavy coat plus thermals to stand up to the windchill. Don’t get your feet wet, pard.
Is this a genuine risk or just an over reaction? I find it difficult to comprehend how ash from a relatively small eruption can affect aircraft over 3000 [Iceland to Israel] miles away! If this is a precedent then if a few volcanoes around the world go off simultaneously then we could have a global shutdown for months. Why do I get the feeling that without supercomputers and modelling we wouldn’t be so concerned. And [as historically] for aircraft a reasonable distance away there would be no problems.
cheers David
The negative Arctic oscillation is keeping the SO2 over the North Atlantic so far:
http://sacs.aeronomie.be/nrt/index.php?Year=2010&Month=05&Day=10&point.x=100&point.y=51&Region=105
O/T speaking of volcanoes and earthquakes:
”
During the month of April 2010, 117 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone region. The largest event was a magnitude 3.3 on April 3rd at 9:15 PM MDT, located about 7 miles east southeast of West Yellowstone, MT. This event was part of a swarm which lasted from April 1st to the 7th. The swarm contained 52 earthquakes, with magnitudes 0.4 to 3.3. This latest swarm is considered part of the intense January/February Madison Plateau 2010 earthquake swarm that contained more than 2,300 earthquakes. A summary of the Madison Plateau swarm can be found at: “ http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/publications/2010/10swarm.php
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
Also if you want to track earthquakes during the last 48 hours in Iceland try:
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/
It’s Katla we need to watch with an explosive power said to be 10 times greater.
I received this e-mail from a friend. I can’t verify the facts, but the implications are interesting.
Bob
Interesting observations
For all of you out there in America and across the globe who have fought so hard to tackle the hideous enemy of our planet, namely carbon emissions, that bogus god you worship named “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”, there is some really bad news that will be very painful for you to process. But it is my duty to pass it on to you anyway.
Are you sitting down?
Okay, here’s the bombshell. The current volcanic eruption going on in Iceland, since it first started spewing volcanic ash a week ago, has, to this point, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet. Not only that, this single act of God has added emissions to the earth estimated to be 42 times more than can be corrected by the extreme human regulations proposed for annual reductions.
I know, I know…. (have a group hug)…it’s very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up til midnight to finish your kid’s “The Green Revolution” science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, going on vacation to a city park instead of Yosemite, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your $1 light bulbs with $10 light bulbs …well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just the past week.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere in the past week has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And, those hundreds of thousands of American jobs you helped move to Asia with expensive emissions demands on businesses… you know, the ones that are creating even more emissions than when they were creating American jobs, well that must seem really worthwhile now.
I’m so sorry. And I do wish that there was some kind of a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western U.S.A. will start in about two months and those fires will negate your efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our world for the next two years.
So, grab a Coke, give the world a hug, and have a nice day!
One of the best volcano blogs around with a good mixture of specialists and amatures
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/05/eyjafjallajokull_continues_to.php
Exerpt from todays comments
‘Apart from the fact that the eruption is continuing and there have been a few interesting eartquake swarms, not much is happening at the moment as can be evidenced from the amount of ideas bandied about. So how about we organise those possible scenarios according to probability with the most likely first and the improbable last and then argue about it?
a) The eruption will continue for some time (weeks to months) and then die down with the possibility of renewed activity on a minor scale
b) The eruption will continue as alternative a) but there will be an unexpected, major eruptive episode (VEI 4+)
c) The eruption will continue but one or more new vents, not neccessarily at the summit, will open up
d) There will be a basaltic intrusion at the Godabunga “cryptodome” which sets off a large eruption there (VEI 3+)
e) An intrusion from the Eyjafjalla volcanic system will set off an equally large or larger eruption at Katla (VEI 4+)
f) A rift will open up across the mountain and into Markarfljot (N) and Þórsmörk (S), as has happened in the distant past and we’ll have a fissure eruption of the Eldgja or Laki type
g) An intrusion from the Eyjafjalla volcanic system sets off a major eruption of Tindfjallajökull volcano (the northern “arm” of the Feb-March EQ swarms)
h) There will be a very large eruption (VEI 6+) at Eyjafjallajökull that forms a large caldera, 7+ km diameter
I’ll stick with alternative a) but think d) & f) are distant possibilities. What’s your favourite of these or do you have other scenarios?’
Good way to keep up with Icelandic events, averaging over 600 comments per day.
“In most cases, though, high-latitude eruptions have little influence on global climate even when they are explosive enough to inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere”
So does that mean the AGW crowd won’t try and blame the current cooling trend on this or similar eruptions?
homo sapiens, soon to be toast. this is how you get published!
10 May: USA Today: Report: Climate change could render much of world uninhabitable
A worst-case scenario of global warming, in which temperatures would soar some 21 degrees, is that much of the world may simply become too hot for humans to live in, according to new research published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We found that … a 21-degree warming would put half of the world’s population in an uninhabitable environment,”says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University…
The new research calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature that humans can withstand.
“The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan,” says study lead author Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney…
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/report-climate-change-could-render-much-of-world-uninhabitable/1
11 May: Sydney Morning Herald: Too hot to live: grim long-term prediction
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/too-hot-to-live-grim-longterm-prediction-20100510-uoqw.html
rbateman said on May 10, 2010 at 1:58 pm:
I’ve taken that tour twice so far, back when I was a school kid. It was very bearable with just a light jacket, and there wasn’t really any “wind” to notice.
Besides, did you forget those old sayings showing the relative nature of those temperatures, or are said sayings just a “local” thing in these “cold” temperate zones? “When it gets cold enough to put on a sweater in fall is when it gets warm enough to take off a sweater in spring.” Various wording exist of the same thought.
Kim (1:23pm) says:
“Can it, Katla. It doesn’t have to get that cold that fast. We’ve got ‘em on the run.”
I’m hoping to be one of the last survivors on Snowball Earth, shivering in a cave, wrapped in a blanket, muttering, “Gore, Hansen, Mann and Jones… huh….. not so smart now, are yer? Re – SULT!”
Dramatic photos of the eruption:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/more_from_eyjafjallajokull.html
Thanks Dr. Bob, nice to have someone keep things in perspective. Where’s my Coke, oh, there it is… Toast! (And now a big burp of tasty CO2!)
“Sulfur dioxide turns into tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. These light-colored droplets cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space.”
OMG, that sounds just like…VENUS! CO2 increasing, sulfuric acid increasing, oceans overheating…the Venusians are obviously “venus-forming” our planet! James Hansen tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen!
Brent Hargreaves says:
May 10, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Kim (1:23pm) says:
“Can it, Katla. It doesn’t have to get that cold that fast. We’ve got ‘em on the run.”>>
Ever notice that most skeptics think that some warming would be a good thing anyway, but hope for cooling to prove the warmists wrong. The warmists on the other hand think cooling would be a good thing, but hope for warming to prove the skeptics wrong.
The whole world, she be all so up mixed direction not out figured up.
Sulfur dioxide turns into tiny droplets of sulfuric acid.
But SO2 would only form sulfurous acid. Does the SO2 pick up the extra oxygen at high altitude? Or what is the mechanism?
Both Joe Bastardi of Accuwx & Joe D’Aleo (of Icecap & Dr Dewpoint fame) would disagree on the climate conclusions. Both would argue high latitude volcanoes effect the AO & NAO, causing a blocky pattern like we saw last winter – downward forcing of the troposphere at high latitudes & forcing of cold air into the mid-latitudes, while leaving the high latitudes relatively warm. Both were forecasted that pattern for this previous winter based on high latitude volcanoes in Alaska & Russia last summer – and they were spot on with those forecasts.
That being said, I don’t think the ejecta in going high enough yet – nothing getting into the stratosphere, at least that I have seen reported.
For an excellent discussion on this subject by D’Aleo, please see:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/High_latitude_eruptions.pdf
I propose that the EPA ban volcanoes….. If you can ban CO2, you can ban anything;-)
Kirk Myers says:
May 10, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Great pictures in that link you provided. Some just sent a chill down my spine because of the sheer grandeur of nature’s power and immensity. Thanks for posting them!
Dr Bob
Very well put Bob. I went to the hardware store today and saw all those silly bulbs and had an angry feeling. Messed up my whole day. How can so many folks be so stupid?
Monitoring earthquakes in Iceland:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/eqlist.html
map for the above:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/myrjokull.html
From: http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/23_1/23-1_staudigel2.pdf
On underwater seamounts that have formed from volcanoes: “…that have not
yet shoaled enough to be dominated by
shallow-water explosive activity (which
starts at ~ 700-m water depth). There
may be hundreds of thousands of such
seamounts (Wessel et al., 2010)”
So what we are seeing from Iceland could be happening in countless places underwater everyday and we have no idea it’s happening. Maybe this, not fossil fuels, explains the rising CO2.
davidc said on May 10, 2010 at 7:30 pm
But that leaves us to explain why now? (Why has such volcanic activity only occurred during the last 50 years or so?)
Live web cam with heat sensor cam:
http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/
hulme quote at the end might qualify as a comment of the week!
11 May: BBC: Richard Black: Academics urge radical new approach to climate change
In an article for the BBC’s Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: “Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental ‘problem’ that is capable of being ‘solved’.
“It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever.”
The academics advocate concentrating first on short-term fixes for greenhouse gases or other warming agents, such as black carbon – particles emitted from the incomplete burning of fossil fuels, principally in diesel engines and wood stoves….
He (Bill Hare from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany)
also questioned the fact that the Hartwell Paper initiative was co-funded by Keidenran Nippon, the Japanese industry lobby group that has regularly opposed the establishment of binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, instead promoting voluntary initiatives.
But Prof (Muke) Hulme denied any link between the group’s funding and its conclusions.
“The names of the co-authors suggest to me – and I am one of them so I can certainly speak for myself – individuals who resist all attempts to be cowed into adopting anyone else’s viewpoint, whether from a paymaster, priest, president, princess or prophet,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10106362.stm