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Views Of Volcanic Ash Plume Over Europe – The Lede Blog – Nytimes.com

Updated | 6:23 p.m. As my colleagues Nicola Clark and Liz Robbins report, a high-altitude cloud of ash drifting south and east from an erupting volcano in Iceland has closed airports in northern Europe. Flights have been canceled because volcanic ash contains silicates, or glass fibers, which can melt inside jet engines, causing them to flame out and stall.

Here is a map showing the spread of the ash plume and the restrictions on air travel on Thursday afternoon, based on data from Britains National Weather Service, from the Web site of Spiegel, the German magazine:

Another map from the same Web site shows the reach of the ash above Europe at 1 a.m. Central European Time.

The ash is coming from an eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, located near a glacier of the same name (which, for those not fluent in Icelandic, is pronounced AYA-fyatla-jo-kutl, according to NASA or something like this) in southern Iceland, which began erupting last month for the first time in nearly 200 years.

The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, which monitors weather patterns from space, has some dramatic images of the ash clouds movement on the home page of its Web site.

The organization explains:

Meteosat-9 observes the ash cloud from the volcanic eruption under Eyjafjallajoekull glacier in Iceland. Initially the cloud shows a distinctive black color, due to ice particles which initially mask the ash signature. As the cloud progresses eastwards the cloud takes a reddish hue, clearly indicating the presence of volcanic ash.

Here is a later view from the same satellite, showing the movement of the ash between 0:00 and 13:30 UCT today:

Another video made from Eumetsats images was posted on YouTube earlier, as Adam Gabbatt notes in a live blog tracking the disruption caused by the ash on The Guardians Web site.

As The Lede explained last month, the spectacular images of the eruptions early stages had tourists rushing to the scene, though it may not be necessary to hurry, given that the last time there was an eruption at Eyjafjallajokull, in 1821, it continued for two years.

Closer views of the volcano, from three Web cams, can be had online although one camera is currently down for maintenance. A handy interactive graphic from The Guardian shows how the ash is spreading across European airspace.

The London Volcanic Ash Advisory Center part of a global network is posting updated volcanic ash advisory maps on its Web site. The most recent map, made at 18:00 GMT is here. Montreals Volcanic Ash Advisory Center is also keeping an eye on Eyjafjallajokull.

In Iceland itself, The Icelandic Review reports that winds pushing the ash east, away from the capital, have allowed Keflavik airport, near the capital, Reykjavik, to remain open, for now, although flights to Europe have been canceled or disrupted. The Review adds:

There is nothing to indicate that the eruption is about to subside. The cloud of smoke rising from the volcanos summit turns black every now and then, resulting in ash fall. The winds blow the ash towards the east.

This video report from Britains Channel 4 News looks at the disruption to flights, and explains what has happened to jets in the past that flew through clouds of volcanic ash:

As a reader notes, the ash could bring spectacular sunsets to Europe. Robin Scagell, of the Britains Society for Popular Astronomy, told The Daily Mail on Thursday: Be ready to enjoy some dazzling arrays of colors especially purples and reds looking much stronger than usual. The most amazing sunsets Ive ever seen were in Australia after the El Chichon volcano went off in Mexico in 1982. The sky turned an intense purple and even the moon turned blue. We may also see a phenomenon called a Bishops Ring a huge brown or blue halo around the sun that was first noticed when the Krakatoa volcano exploded in 1883.

A colleague draws our attention to the fact that Edvard Munchs famous painting, The Scream, may have been inspired by the experience of such a sunset. A description of the painting on an art Web site includes this quote from the painter:

I was out walking with two friends. The sun began to set. I felt a breath of melancholy. Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. I paused, deathly tired and leaned on a fence looking out across the flaming clouds over the blue-black fjord and towns. My friends walked on and there I still stood, trembling with fear and I sensed a great, infinite scream run through nature.

The site adds: Astronomers now speculate that the red sky he saw might have been caused by the 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, half a world away in Indonesia, that sent massive dust clouds up into the atmosphere, leading to a series of intense and other spectacular sunsets.

Some observers of volcanic activity in Iceland have even speculated that disturbances to the atmosphere in Europe following a huge eruption in Iceland in 1783 may even have helped incite the French Revolution by destroying crops and breeding discontent. As Paul Simons notes in an article in Londons Times on the possible effects of the ash on Britains climate, the haze over Europe after that eruption certainly caused fear among the superstitious:

The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena, wrote the naturalist Gilbert White, in Hampshire. The country people look with a kind of superstitious awe at the red louring aspect of the sun thro the fog.