Perspective

The display of natural force that has unfolded in last month has brought misery to millions of stranded passengers, raised concerns about the economic impact of a protracted disruption of international travel and forced hundreds of locals to evacuate their homes in Iceland. The enormous ash cloud from a remote Icelandic volcano caused the biggest flight disruption since Sept. 11,2001 as it drifted over northern Europe and stranded travelers on six continents in this month. Thousands of flights from European airports have been cancelled because of a cloud of ash thrown up by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland.
Flying through a volcanic cloud can cause a plane’s engines to fail, a threat that led officials to suspend flights. Most airports across the northern tier of the continent were closed but even as far south as Rome and Madrid the number of flights was limited. A number of countries have closed their airspace, including Britain, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Poland.
Flights were also severely disrupted in Norway, Finland and Switzerland, while airports in the north of France and Germany were closed later as volcanic ash drifted across Europe.

The cancellations came after a volcano under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted for the second time in less than a month on 14th April, sending plumes of black ash and white steam into the air. Emergency officials in Iceland were evacuating hundreds of people late on 15th April, as new flash floods threatened to endanger farms in the area near an ash-spewing volcano. Actually there’s an interesting thing from the Iceland volcano’s name Eyjafjallajokull. Pronunciation is so difficult for us. Even, many people still don’t know what’s the right pronunciation of Eyjafjallajokull volcano. According to some sources like Yahoo News and The Associated Press, Iceland volcano name should be simply pronounced as “ay-yah-FYAH’-plah-yer-kuh-duhl”.

However, it’s too complicated and not easy for us to pronounce it.

With major airports closed, governments resorted to innovative methods to get their citizens home — the British navy used three warships to ferry Britons from mainland Europe to England, for example. In the United States, Europeans in Florida without a way home were offered a free visit to the Sea World theme park.

Iceland, the land of ice and fire, is a true paradise for volcanologists. In few places on earth, geology and human history are so closely connected to volcanism as on Iceland. The island owns its existence to a large volcanic hot spot sitting on a mid-oceanic ridge, a unique setting. The plate boundary between the American and Eurasian tectonic plates crosses Iceland from south to North and the spreading process can be directly measured and observed on land.

The island has about 130 volcanic mountains, of which 18 have erupted since the settlement of Iceland in 874 AD. Over the past 500 years, Iceland’s volcanoes have erupted a third of the total global lava output. Although the Laki eruption in 1783 had the largest eruption of lava in the last 500 years, the Eldgjá eruption of 934 AD and other Holocene eruptions were even larger.

Geologists explain this high concentration of volcanic activity as being due to a combination of the island’s position on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and a volcanic hotspot underneath the island. The island sits astride the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates, and most volcanic activity is concentrated along the plate boundary, which runs across the island from the south-west to the north-east of the island. Some volcanic activity occurs offshore, especially off the southern coast. This includes wholly submerged submarine volcanoes and even newly formed volcanic islands such as Surtsey and Jólnir.

The Eyjafjallajökull eruption closely followed an eruption in Fimmvör?uháls, which had erupted on March 20, temporarily quiesced by April 12, and then erupted with a large ash plume (due to magma coming out under ice) on April 15. The ash cloud was significant enough to shut down airports across more than 20 European countries, many of which only began to reopen on April 20.

The wider economic consequence in our ‘just-in-time’ society is incalculable at this stage given the disruption to holidays, business plans and indeed the wider business supply chain. However, the global cost of the disruption will surely result in a cost of billions rather than hundreds of millions of pounds. The head of the International Air Transport Association told the BBC the flight ban was costing airlines $200 million a day. He was sharply critical of government decisions to so severely limit flights. In addition to lost revenues, airlines will incur added costs for re-routing aircrafts, and care for stranded passen­gers alongside stranded aircrafts at various ports. Airlines typically are uninsured against this type of event. Most European carriers asked governments to ease the bans during the event, as the test flights they conducted showed no damage on the aircrafts.

The impact on the tourism industry is very difficult to assess. Although arrivals were almost completely halted for about five days, hotels in most countries affected by flight bans are packed with stranded passengers, and demand for car rent­als and train service has boomed, fueled by people trying to get around Europe in the absence of air­lifts. Thus, what has been detrimental for airlines, in contrast, has had positive or no impact in other tour­ism areas.

The economic cost in terms of trade on a global basis is not very limited. Some perishables such as fresh fish and cut flowers, which are flown to Europe from countries such as Japan and Kenya, have suffered supply bottlenecks. Some other sectors which also rely heavily on air freight such as pharmaceuticals and electronics were able to withstand the flight paralysis by drawing down their inventories.

Now comes to the environmental question, initially the environmental consequences will be severe. The contents of eruptions depend on location and geologic conditions, but all volcanoes spew skyward a mix of pulverized rock and glass, both of which can devastate ecosystems in the short term. The floating ash that has limited air travel will soon settle on Europe’s fields and water systems and may have deadly consequences when ingested by livestock. The glass-and-rock mixture is fatal to most plant species since it prevents photosynthesis; as a result, greenery in Iceland and parts of northern Europe will have to fight to survive. But the effects don’t last long. Within several months, the ash will simply blow away into the atmospheric background or fossilize to form new rock.The bigger concern for climate researchers is sulfur dioxide, one of the prominent byproducts of volcanic eruptions. Because of its molecular structure, significant quantities of the compound can lead not to global warming but to global cooling. USGS researchers last year who analyzed the effects of three different Indonesian volcanoes over the past 200 years found that long after the ash and other particulate matter settle, which usually happens within days or weeks, increased levels of SO2 aerosols that migrate into the upper stratosphere actually deflect sunlight and heat rather than locking them in. Long term, serious global cooling could be even worse than warming, decimating the availability and quality of seeds worldwide and influencing mass extinctions. Eyjafjallajökull’s aerosols will likely be rained out in the troposphere before they make it that high, but even output from the strongest eruptions settles within a few years, limiting lasting environmental impact.

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano is still spewing ash as scientists warn the explosions could trigger much greater eruptions from a nearby volcano. The ongoing minor eruptions is said to pose no threat to air traffic but is feared to set off a much bigger volcano, posing a threat of some magnitude.

Writer: Reza