On May 21 of this year, the Grímsvötn volcano in South-East Iceland erupted, sending 12 kilometre high plumes into the atmosphere, creating an ash cloud that rose up to 20 kilometres, and was accompanied by several earthquakes. As a result, the 2011 eruption is 10 times larger than the 2004 eruption and the strongest in the last century.
Below, are images from the eruption and of the ash plume that ended up disrupting air travel in Iceland, followed shortly by Greenland, Scotland, Norway, Svalbard and a small part of Denmark, Northern Ireland, northern England and Northern Germany.
NASA MODIS satellite image acquired at 05:15 UTC on May 22, 2011 shows the plume casting shadow to the west.Grímsvötn eruption at 13:00 UTC on May 22, 2011 captured by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite.Ash plume from the Grímsvötn volcano as seen on 23 May at 12.00 GMT by the MERIS instrument on board ESA's Envisat satellite. Although the image shows the plume drifting southwest, models predict that most of the ash will be blown northeast over the Arctic Ocean.NASA satellite captures ash plume from Grímsvötn Volcano, Iceland on May 23, 2011 at 12:05 UTC. This Envisat image, acquired on 24 May 2011, shows a large cloud of ash north-east of Scotland that has been carried by winds from Iceland’s Grímsvötn volcano about 1000 km away. The Grímsvötn volcano, located in southeast Iceland about 200 km east of Reykjavik, began erupting on 21 May for the first time since 2004.
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