John Eby: Angry Icelandic volcano wreaks havoc on aviation

Published 10:41 am Monday, April 26, 2010

ebyIt’s one of the weirder occurrences I can remember, this volcano with the super long name that sounds like Julie Andrews should be singing about it as Mary Poppins.

Usually, it takes singer Bjork, whose last name is as long as the volcano’s, doing something odd to land Iceland in the news.

Yet here we are with an Icelandic volcano eruption responsible for one of the most costly and widespread aviation calamities on record.

As air travel ramped back up April 21, we’re talking about 22,500 flights through European airspace – more than 80 percent of the usual tally.

Ash wiped out some 100,000 flights.

How could something as old school as a volcano which last erupted in 1821 cause such a travel nightmare that stranded planes and passengers across the continent April 15 at a cost of billions?

After days of enforced inactivity, busy airports in London, Paris and Frankfurt, Germany, came back to life.

Airspace restrictions remained in Finland and northern Scotland.

Finger-pointing will continue for some time.

The volcano continued to belch off and on for 13 months during its 1821 run.
Back then there were no jet engines to clog with ash.

Six months of intermittent rumblings precipitating airport closings could about wipe out recovery from the recession.

As it was, a German BMW plant and a Japanese Nissan plant shut temporarily when ash prevented arrival of parts shipments.

“You’ve got to make sure people are safe and secure. We would never be forgiven if we had let planes fly and there was a real danger to people’s lives,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Eyjafjallajokull’s ash plume stalled aviation over Europe for more than five days because of the interaction between ice and lava during the eruption, as well as the lava composition, which is unique and influenced by the country’s glacial nature.

Eyjafjnallajokull is a subglacial volcano, meaning the eruption occurs beneath the surface of an ice sheet.

Heat of the lava from these volcanoes has the power to melt overlying ice, making lava flow much more easily.

Who knew the domino effect an angry volcano could have?

Kenya tossed 10 million flowers – mostly roses – since April 14.

Greece and Portugal depend on tourism to keep debt crises at bay.

Asparagus, broccoli and green beans destined for dinner tables were fed to Kenyan cattle because storage facilities were full.

If flights continued to be disrupted, pineapples would start piling up on farms in Ghana, Africa.

European airports such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol, which I’ve actually been to, are major travel crossroads between Africa and North America and from Asia west.

“The eruption did migrate to be subglacial, and that interaction with the glacial ice has been more explosive through fragmentation of the lavas,” explained Peter La Femina, associate professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University.

The volcano erupted in separate phases, with the first relatively calm phase taking place March 20.

However, eruptions within the second phase occurring on April 12 were much more violent and spewed out a much different type of lava than the previous phase.

This dramatic change in eruption was possible because volcanoes emit lava of different consistencies, but predicting what type of consistency will result from an eruption is difficult.

The interaction between the lava and the surrounding ice gives off steam, which propels ash more explosively than slow-moving, shallow eruptions exhibited by Hawaiian volcanoes.

Steam-powered explosions can propel ash thousands of feet into the Earth’s atmosphere.

In Eyjafjallajokull’s case, ash clouds were spewed up to 30,000 feet into the air.

These powerful steam-powered eruptions shatter the magma into very fine ash.

Those ash particles are easily dispersed both upwards and outwards in the atmosphere and can remain airborne for long periods of time.

Atmospheric winds also enabled ash dispersion, carrying fine particles from Eyjafjallajokull and extending across much of Europe.

However, La Femina said it is very difficult to predict ash dispersion levels after individual eruptions.

The uncertainty of the direction of the ash plume combined with the dangerous nature of ash itself were contributing factors to the closure of European airspace.

“When you have a volcanic eruption, especially when it’s so highly explosive, you’re fragmenting the lava down to individual glass shards,” La Femina explained to AccuWeather.com writer Carly Porter.

The problem arises when the particulate material interacts with modern jet engines.
“Temperatures within the jets can actually melt that glass and fuse it to the turbines,” he said.

“It basically causes the engines to stall.”

Although eruptions are easier to forecast through the use of seismic equipment, it is inaccurate to assume the concentration of lava spewing from a volcano will be of a particular consistency.

Ultimately, scientists cannot predict whether or not the same very fine ash will continue to spew from Eyjafjallajokull, or if only a steam cloud including no particulate matter and no risk to aviation will erupt.

John Eby is Daily News managing editor. E-mail him at john.eby @leaderpub.com.