Cambridge researchers hope to prevent flight disruption through Eyjafjallajokull volcanic ash study
Researchers are hoping a 17 minute film of an Icelandic volcanic eruption could help them forecast the dispersal of potentially dangerous ash particles.
When the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted in April 2010 it pumped around 250 million tonnes of ash into the atmosphere.
The particles posed a deadly risk to all air traffic, meaning flights across Europe and much of the world were grounded for days.
Prior to Covid it was the biggest disruption to civilian airspace since the Second World War.
Speaking at the time of the eruption, aviation experts explained that if the particles were to enter aircraft engines they could possibly shut off power.
Watch an ITV News Anglia report about the dangers posed by volcanic ash from 2010
Now researchers from the University of Cambridge are studying video footage of the ash cloud in the hope it could help better forecast how far explosive eruptions disperse ash particles.
The ability to predict how ash will spread in the aftermath of an eruption could help reduce impacts to flights by informing decisions to shut down specific areas of airspace.
The footage allowed the scientists to compare characteristics of the ash cloud, such as its shape and speed, and calculate the amount of ash spewed from the volcano, known as the eruption rate.
Prof Andy Woods, lead author of the study from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute for Energy and Environmental Flows, said: "No one has previously observed the shape and speed of wind-blown ash clouds directly.
"The eruption rate determines how much ash goes up into the atmosphere, how high the ash cloud will go, how long the plume will stay buoyant, how quickly the ash will start falling to the ground and the area over which ash will land.”
Volcanoes across the world are increasingly monitored via video, using webcams or high-resolution cameras.
Prof Woods said that if high frame-rate video observations could be accessed during an eruption, this real-time information could be fed into ash cloud forecasts to more realistically reflect changing eruption conditions.
During the 17-minute footage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption, the researchers observed that the eruption rate dropped by about half.
“It’s amazing that you can learn eruption rate from a video - that’s something that we’ve previously only been able to calculate after an eruption has happened.
"It’s important to know the changing eruption rate because that could impact the ash cloud dispersal downwind.”
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