Eyjafjallajӧkull
Eruption of Eyjafjalla - Iceland 2010
There are streams of flood water coming down, although the ones that came down last night were much thicker and filled with mud, ash, and large clumps of ice. We are still on alert but have not been evacuated. We are luckier than those in surrounding areas as our village is not under direct threat at the moment. All the roads east of us are closed from our village and the bridge that crosses the river is in danger of being washed away after the river adjacent to our village was flooded. Diggers had to break up our main road in four places to allow the bridge to hold and let the flood water through, but the damage is extensive and many of the farmers have lost their fresh water inlets. This road is the ring around Iceland, and is the only connection with the rest of the country. We are hoping that the flooding will start to decrease soon so that the road can be salvaged and at least people can start getting through. So reads Gina Christie’s eyewitness account of the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajӧkull (Christie, 2010).
Located, where the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans meet, atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, sits the Nordic European island country of Iceland. It is a popular tourist destination built of stunning waterfalls, steaming geysers, sheer cliffs, soothing hot springs, and glacier-covered volcanoes, and every few years now, one of its hundreds of volcanoes, unpredictably wakes.
For
almost 200 years, Eyjafjallajӧkull, one of the smaller ice caps of Iceland, has
peacefully slept. The first known
eruption was in the year 920, followed by an eruption in 1612, and then again
from 1821-1823. The latter of the
eruptions, began on 19 December 1821. It
was reported that the volcano erupted so suddenly; that villagers only had 20
minutes to gather their belongings. During
that particular eruption, the ash released, contained a large fraction of
fluoride. It wasn’t until years later
that farmers realized that the extreme amounts of fluoride had poisoned their
cattle and sheep, slowly killing them off (Larsen, 1999).The eruption also melted large segments of the glacier, causing great amounts of flooding in nearby rivers. Eyjafjallajӧkull continued to erupt for two years, eventually causing a nearby volcano, Katla, to erupt. The Liverpool Mercury described that when the eruption began, ice was dispersed in every direction. A number of stones, of different sizes, rolled down the mountain, accompanied with a noise of thunder. This was immediately followed by a discharge of an enormous and lofty column of flame, which illuminated the whole country (The Liverpool Mercury, 1822).
On 26 February 2010, unusual seismic activity was registered by the Meteorological Institute of Iceland. The seismic activity continued to increase, and from 3 March to 5 March, close to 3,000 earthquakes were measured at the epicenter of the volcano. Kurt Feigl, a professor of geosciences at the University of Wisconsin, said the volcano had been showing signs of restlessness. “Several months of unrest preceded the eruptions, with magma moving around downstairs in the plumbing and making noise in the form of earthquakes.” (Jha, 2010)
Just
before midnight on 20 March 2010, a half a kilometer long fissure (a long,
narrow, crack) opened, right across from a popular hiking trail, emitting a
small eruption. Lava soon began flowing
down the trail, melting snow and causing the rivers to swell. People were
temporarily evacuated from the area and roads were closed, but were again opened
that afternoon and the people were able to return home. After 2 weeks of spectacular lava fountains, the eruption of Eyjafjallajӧkull was winding down and even came to a pause for 2 consecutive days. However, small earthquakes suggested that magma was still moving underground. A high increase of water in nearby rivers and streams alerted the Icelandic Civil Protection Department and an evacuation of nearby farms and towns was ordered and 800 Icelanders had to leave their homes and farms.
“I woke up on Friday with a weird feeling that something just wasn’t right. It wasn’t light as it normally is – we don’t really have night-time at this time of year. I looked outside and there was a thick, black cloud of ash directly above us. It was exactly like the middle of winter. What is even more surreal was the absolute bright daylight on either side of our village” (Christie, 2010).
On 12 April, Eyjafjallajӧkull erupted for a second time, punching through the ice cap at the top of the mountain. This eruption was estimated to be 10-20 times more powerful than the previous one in March.
“This is a very much more violent eruption,
because it’s interacting with ice and water,” said Andy Russell, an expert in
glacial flooding at the UK’s University of Newcastle. “It becomes much more explosive, instead of a
nice lava flow oozing out of the ground” (Helgason, 2010).The water exploded into steam and rapidly cooled the magma. The magma turned into a fine-grained ash cloud rising 30,000 feet up into the atmosphere. Christie’s eyewitness account of the falling ash is as follows, “The wind changed and it rained ash. Everything, absolutely everything is coated in a thick, black gloop. All my beautiful flowers and rhubarb are soaked in it. I have no idea if any of them will survive or not” (Christie, May 2010).
Amongst the falling ash, the billowing ash created
phenomenal lighting displays, colored sunsets of fiery red, and forced the
largest commercial air-traffic shut-down since 9-11 (BBC News, April 2010). The
shut-down led to air travel disruption in northwest Europe for six days from 15
April to 21 April. The closures caused roughly
10 million passengers to be stranded not only in Europe, but across the world. Flights were cancelled as the ash cloud quickly moved across the globe. Volcanic ash is abrasive and dangerous for aircrafts. It reduces visibility, causes damage to fuel and water systems, and can clog engines causing them to fail. It can also affect landing gear. One of the biggest difficulties for flight crews is the problem of distinguishing ash clouds from ordinary clouds, both visually and on radar. (Mail Online, April 2010).
The ash cloud caused further disruptions to air travel in many of the countries on 4 May and 5 May, and then again on 9 May and on 16 May, cancelling over 107,000 flights. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated that the airline industry worldwide would lose $200 million a day during the disruption. IATA later stated that the total loss for the airline industry was around $1.7 billion.
Scottish passengers were the first to feel the impact of the eruption. Christine Campbell, 55, was at Glasgow Airport to fly to La Rochelle, in France, for her son’s
wedding. She said, “When we arrived we were told there were no flights going out today and to go home. But I wanted to come and wait anyway because I didn’t want to miss anything. I’m really disappointed and upset because I’ve been looking forward to this wedding for two years and at the last minute there’s this hiccup.” (Mail Online, April 2010).
The ash indirectly affected many people as well including the funeral of Polish president Lech Kaczyński on 18 April. The funeral was to have been attended by 69 presidents, prime ministers, and other heads of states. Almost half of these, including Barack Obama, were unable to travel to Poland because of the disrupted air traffic (Cook, 2010).
In regards to the disruption, Christie responds, “I know that some people are very upset to have missed their flights, but that is just a temporary inconvenience. The affects from this volcanic eruption will be felt for a very, very long time here in Iceland. And, if Katla explodes, it will do so without warning. It will make the eruption from Eyjafjallajӧkull look like a storm in a teacup” (Christie, April 2002).
Katla, a volcano just 25 kilometers east of Eyjafjallajӧkull, which in the past has erupted simultaneously with Eyjafjallajӧkull, is a bigger worry for Icelanders. It is much more active and known for its powerful eruptions and its large magma chamber. An eruption could cause widespread flooding and disrupt air traffic between Europe and North America. The last major eruption took place in 1918, and volcanologists say a new blast is overdue.
Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, said, “So far there have been no signs of the reawakening of the Katla volcano, but a lot of things can still happen, so we are monitoring it quite closely” (Mail Online, April 2010).
After the Eyjafjallajӧkull eruption, Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson was proud to announce that there were zero casualties. However, he warned European officials that they should be prepared for future eruptions. He advised industry to develop engines that are less sensitive to ash. European countries, including the United Kingdom who don’t have volcanoes of their own, are brainstorming their own ideas and solutions for when the next volcanic eruption occurs and sends an ash cloud billowing over their skies.
Although scientists know a lot about the formation, structure and history of volcanos, predicting the eruption of a volcano is still a mystery and predicting what problems they will create is even more of a mystery. Researchers stress that the study of the events leading up to the eruption will not necessarily help predict future events either. “We’re still trying to figure out what wakes up a volcano. We’re a long way from being able to predict eruptions, but if we can visualize the magma as it moves upward inside the volcano, then we will improve our understanding of the processes driving volcanic activity” (Fiegl, 2010). Needless to say, the eruption of Eyjafjallajӧkull is going to become textbook example of how a volcano will affect the modern, technologic society in the 21st century. Volcanologists will continue to study sleeping volcanos, as they patiently wait for the next one to erupt.
Works Cited
BBC
News. “Iceland’s Eyjafjallajӧkull
Volcano Reduces Activity.” BBC News, BBC
News. Web. 23 May 2010.
Christie,
Gina. “Eyewitness: Icelandic Volcano.” BBC News. BBC News, 16 Apr.2010. Web. 17 May. 2010.
Fiegl, Kurt. “How Icelandic Volcanos Issued Warnings Months Before Its Eruption.”
The Guardian. Web. 17 Nov 2010.
Helgason, Gudjon. “Iceland’s Eyjafjallajӧkull Erupts Again, Hundreds Evacuated.” TN
Global Travel Industry News. 14 Apr 2010
Jha, Vik. “Icelandic Ash Cloud Part Two?” The Guardian. The Guardian. Web. 13 Oct 2011.
Larsen, G. Reykjavik: Science Institute. p. 13. Research Report RH-28-99, 1999.
Liverpool Mercury, “The Last Time Eyjafjallajokul Erupted.” Volcanism.wordpress.com.
13 Sept 1822, p. 86.
Mail Online. “Back Into the Clouds.” The Economist. 16 Apr 2010
Met Office, Metoffice.gov.uk. 23 May 2010
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