Volcanic Eruption in Iceland No End In Sight | Larger Eruption Anticpated

Iceland (Apr 16) – Millions of air travelers in Europe have been grounded for the last few days due to ash “fallout” from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. The chaos for travelers does not end there whereas, they are virtually trapped outside their homeland for flights inbound are cancelled as well.

The airborne ash and debris versus the visibility problem is the real issue for airline safety experts say. Volcanic ash is both highly corrosive and very abrasive which can have devastating effects on the turbines within jet aircraft engines.

As of today, the jet stream causing the ash to be carried further into Europe seems to be providing relief for some in both Scotland and Wales, and is pushing the bulk of the ash cloud further to the east allowing some cities to begin limited airport operations. [See Ash Cloud Path]

The environmental impact has varying implications however; Scientists are ranking this eruption as a small time event. The event or magnitude of the eruption is scaled using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). Efforts to gather all the necessary data to “rate” this volcano are still underway, estimates have this one on about a 2 to 3 from a scale ranging 0 to 8.

Scientist still have not released an estimate to how long this eruption will last for, the last recorded eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 1823, lasted almost a year. The current eruption although may soon quiet down, places no guarantee on how long the volcano will remain dormant.

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano lies right on the same “crack” or ridge of volcanic activity in the Atlantic ocean that has been actually quite active in the last years, and has always manage to spew lava along its lifeline on a consistent basis.

The truly amazing factors surround this eruption along with, its location on the Atlantic “fault” is the copious numbers of larger earthquakes seen recently closer to both shores of the Pacific and Atlantic rims.

Environmentally speaking, this eruption should not provide as much of an impact on global temperatures as the much large volcanic eruption in the Philippines in 1991 caused, as the result of that eruption the world temperatures dropped by almost a 9/10^th of a degree.

Within Iceland itself, widespread flooding due to glacier melting has been causing many residents to flee their homes in search of temporary shelter. This being the second volcanic eruption in a month is causing major concerns that a much larger eruption in the same region could be triggered.

The plumes of steam and smoke have been rising to almost 8 kilometers, and scientists have just recently spotted another fissure nearby the much larger Katla volcano convincing them that this smaller eruption is simply an indicator of what yet is still to come.

Video reports from EuroNews would appear to support these findings.

[embeded: src="http://worldnewsvine.tv/Iceland/volcano.swf" width="300" height="217"]

Posted by rgrone on April 16, 2010. Filed under Earth Sciences,Environment,News,Science and Tech,Travel,WorldNewsVine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.