Iceland volcano eruption, Today and before

After 2010 now again Eyjafjallajokull volcano is flinging ash, smoke and stream, miles into the air. It again ground the European flights. The main airport of the country is closed. The scientist is agreed upon that another aviation shutdown is unlikely as the ash is falling to Earth quickly. This volcano is under the ice, it start eruption on Saturday. This volcano eruption since 2004 is the largest eruption of past hundred years. Still no ash reach to the capital but the people nearby are in danger. The Civil protection workers are helping people and advising them to stay inside of their house and use masks. It is about 120 miles away from Reykjavik the capital. A no fly zone of two hundred and twenty nautical miles established around the area. So Keflavik airport, cancelled all domestic flights.

Footage:

Before this in 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which was thought as a small volcano cause a massive disruption to air travel across the western and northern Europe. It remains for about the month of May 2010 and for six days in Aprail2010. It was declared on October 2010 that no more eruption is possible as the mountain is covered by the snow. A large number of airline routes disturbed and create trouble for thousands of people. About twenty countries closed their air space as the ash covered large area of northern Europe. 150000 tones of carbon dioxide released every day by this so called small volcano.

HD footage of Iceland Volcano erruption:

This place is located in far south of island. The ice cap covers the caldera of a volcano 1,666 meters (5,466 ft) in height that has erupted relatively frequently since the last ice The most recent major eruptions occurred in 1921, 1612 (believed to have lasted only three days) and from 1821 to 1823 Previous eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull have been followed by eruptions at its larger neighbor, Katla On 20 April 2010 Icelandic President Ólafur Grímsson said that, "the time for Katla to erupt is coming close ... we [Iceland] have prepared ... it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption"

The volcanic events starting in March 2010 are considered to be a single eruption divided into different phases. The first eruption phase ejected olivine basaltic andesite lava several hundred meters into the air in what is known as an effusive eruption Ash ejection from this phase of the eruption is small, rising to no more than 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) into the atmosphere.

On 14 April 2010, however, the eruption entered an explosive phase and ejected fine, glass-rich ash to over 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) into the atmosphere. The second phase is estimated to be a VEI 4 eruption, which is large, but not nearly, the most powerful eruption possible by volcanic standards. By way of comparison, the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 was rated as 5 on the VEI, and the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was rated as a 6.

What made this volcanic activity so disruptive to air travel was the combination of the following four factors:

The volcano's location is directly under the jet stream

The direction of the jet stream was unusually stable at the time of the eruption's second phase, maintaining a continuous south-easterly heading

The second eruptive phase took place under 200 m (660 ft) of glacial ice. The resulting melt water flowed back into the erupting volcano which created two specific phenomena:

The rapidly vaporizing water significantly increased the eruption's explosive power

The erupting lava cooled very rapidly, which created a cloud of highly abrasive, glass-rich ash, this caused a large amount of flights to be cancelled in the U.K.

The volcano's explosive power was sufficient to inject ash directly into the Jet Stream.

Without the specific combination of the above factors, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull would have been a medium sized, somewhat non-descript eruption that would have been of little interest to those outside the scientific community or those living in the immediate vicinity. However, the above factors were precisely those required for the jet stream to carry the ash directly over northern Europe into some of the busiest airspace in the world.

Special footage of Volcano from above:

Author Profile: AZ

This author has published 84 articles so far. More info about the author is coming soon.