The volcanic island of Guadalupe, seen below peeking through the clouds near the top of this image taken by the European Space Agency’s satellite Envisat, is the cause for the beautiful swirls in the clouds.
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.
Despite the news yesterday that, due to improved volcanic ash safety regulations and differences in the weight of volcanic ash from Grimsvotn compared to Eyjafjallajökull, flight cancellations and disruptions from the Iceland volcano Gromsvotn were likely to be minimal, it seems that the volcano is affecting flights in Europe now.
The Grimsvotn volcano continues to erupt at the same levels as it has since Saturday, the eruption is reportedly “much bigger and more intensive” than Eyjafjallajökull eruption last year and 10 times bigger than Grimvotn’s eruption in 2004. However, it is not expected to have nearly the same effect as the Eyjafjallajökull eruption (and the 2004 Gromsvotn eruption had little effect). Why?
The Russian volcano Bezymianny erupted on the morning of April 14, this year. The images below were taken over a week later on the 22nd, and shows the extend of the eruption by the the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.
Apart from the major disruption in flight traffic and the economy, the Icelandic volcano eruption promises in the short-term to disrupt upper atmospheric circulation patterns and temperatures, with an additional impact due to sulfuric acid “nucleation” and subsequent acid rain. But the medium to long-term impacts of continuous, or increasing, volcanic eruptions is a matter of on-going scientific debate.
