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Iceland Volcano's Ash Grounds European Air Travel
Ch_Omega writes "From the article at CBSNews: 'An ash-spewing volcano in Iceland emptied the skies of aircraft across much of northern Europe on Thursday, grounding planes on a scale unseen since the 9/11 terror attacks. British air space shut down, silencing the trans-Atlantic hub of Heathrow and stranding tens of thousands of passengers around the world. Aviation officials said it was not clear when it would be safe enough to fly again and said it was the first time in living memory that an ash cloud had brought one of the world's most congested airspaces to a standstill.'"
The BBC says "Safety group Eurocontrol said the problem could persist for 48 hours," and the Deccan Herald describes some of the effects on the ground in the volcano's home turf: "In Iceland, hundreds of people are fleeing rising floodwaters as the volcano under the glacier Eyjafjallajokull erupted yesterday again, for a second time in less than a month."
As watching endless episodes of Discovery channel would tell you ash has been responsible for plane crashes in the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9
My cat can type words like Eyjafjallajokull too.
The last eruption was in 1821 and lasted 2 years... you better get yourself some train tickets if you want to travel in Europe!
They won't let planes fly near ash clouds as a safety measure. Reduces visibility, can wreck the windshield and probably the worst thing is that ash and jet engines don't get along. The reason it's getting so much attention is that there are many many flight paths that go near Iceland as it provides a shorter path between the two continents.
I made an app! Shoutium
their entire lively hoods crumble before their very eyes their 'hoods are no where near as lively as some of the 'hoods we have here in the states!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The trouble with ash and aircraft is that, at the high temperatures found in jet engine combustion chambers, ash turns into a delightful material extremely similar to molten glass(you also have the less immediately dramatic; but still annoying, problem of having the ash particles basically sandblasting the surface of the aircraft).
Best case scenario: some rather expensive repairs, including replacing scratched glass and engine parts(or even entire engines).
Worst case scenario: Fiery death.
Not crashes, "just" 4-engine failures. All the cases I read about said once altitude was lowered the engines eventually started up again.
Having all your engines fail isn't minor, but it isn't on the same scale as an actual crash.
___________________ I want to be free()!
The ash cloud hit my city a few hours ago (Sweden). Other than the airports closed (and I don't understand why), nothing out of ordinary is going on.
Here in England you wouldn't know anything was happening. The dust is passing over at high altitude, so its only the planes that are affected. I'm sure we'd have had a very nice sunset if it hadn't been cloudy...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Did you even read the link you posted?, that flight never crashed, it just lost power to all 4 engines for about 15 mins, but they eventually started up again.
I live in the Netherlands, am Scandinavian and side with Iceland on this issue. Please avoid collateral damage on us expats.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
England and Iceland have been in a huff ever since a lot of English tax dodgers lost their fortunes in Icelandic banks that went tits up. The British have been threatening Iceland with everything, even including their major satire weapon weapon of mass destruction, "Viz" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz )
The Icelandians have responded with volcanic gas.
Let's hope that this situation doesn't escalate.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They closed the airports because the ash eats up jet engines, and can't easily be detected on radar. It's mostly silica and doesn't have a dielectric constant different enough from air to show up on most aircraft radar. So even if the cloud is thin enough on the ground to take off safely, you are relying on visual indications of the clouds thickening, and your visibility is poor so it's hard to see.
It's over London now, entirely unnoticeable here.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
It's pretty clear now and I imagine astronomers across the country are rejoicing, not too cold either. With no planes it must be a beautiful view in the more remote places.
How much ash will this volcano produce, and how long will its effect affect commercial air travel in the EU?
It'll be interesting to see how society copes when all you can do is sit back and wait for mother nature.
Live forever, or die trying.
Any pissed off European travelers stuck in the airport reading /. may want to read KLM vs. Mt. Reboubt before hitting the friendly skies.
Oh yes losing power to all 4 engines at once is nothing unusual.
The ash cloud hit my city a few hours ago (Sweden). Other than the airports closed (and I don't understand why), nothing out of ordinary is going on. Sky a far away is a little bit more yellowish, nothing more. It also doesn't affect breathing as even normal street dust is more dangerous.
I'm curious as to how you claim that normal street dust is more dangerous. What do you base this on? Volcanic ash is mostly silicates, and based on what happens when you inhale other silicates (Asbestos) I wouldn't be too keen on the substituting volcanic ash for road dust.
As for why they would close the airports. It is a highly abrasive substance, and is very fouling. Running aircraft through a volcanic cloud is like subjecting it to several years of wear all at once, and not the normal wear that an engineer would design for. You would be running through your engines a very fine abrasive compound and at the same time reducing the performance of your engines as you have displaced some of the air. It can clog your machinery very quickly, especially non-jet engines. (Imagine running a piston engine and adding a highly abrasive and clogging dust to the fuel-air mixture.)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
First they fucked up our fishing, then they fucked up our economy, now they're fucking up our air. I say we INVADE these unpronounceable herring-botherers.
Having no air traffic in (several parts of) Europe is something that matters to quite many people (and perhaps some Americans as well[*]). I wonder if my parents-in-law will get back here on Saturday or if they are stranded in France. ^.^
[*] imagine something funny or apologetical here
It is what it is.
To the folks over there, my advice is "Embrace and enjoy the experience".
I had a similar experience in the unhappy days immediately after 9-11: I had scheduled vacation time (fortunately, I was driving, not flying). It was an unusual experience seeing NO contrails in the sky (and being in Kansas I have a LOT of sky to look at!). While the cause of the event was horribly tragic, the result was interesting.
Moreover, there were several pieces of research on cloud formation and the effects of contrails on it that were conducted during those days.
So, to you in the UK fuming about your planes being grounded - take this time and marvel at the difference in your world (and be thankful the causative event has been relatively free from loss of life so far).
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Yeah, EvE Online might go down due to this! This matters!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Optimistically, now's the best window of downtime they'll have in years to upgrade the air traffic control systems!
Well, I just had a beer with my little brother, a BA Pilot grounded here at our home in switzerland.
BA Flight 009 was special because it is the first such incident documented in a modern jet airliner. The pilots were pretty clouless when they suddenly saw funny flares through their front windows (cause by ash particles). "Somke" was reported from the cabin and after some time they piloted a very expensive glider plane (all 4 engines failed). The 747 has a glide angle of something about 1:15 which is very good for a heavy airliner. But with failing speed indicators it is quiet a challange to restart engines midair (windmill effect is used, they need to hold a certain speed before they can inject fuel and ignite it again).
I think these pilots back then did a tremendously good job if one takes into account that they had no fucking clue what was going on (today they have procedures for such situations, my brother showed me his checklist for such cases). And they had a lot of luck. The pilots lost height due to engine failure, decided to do a 180 turn and once the engines restarted (pretty low) they got into the ash cloud again and lost some engines again before they landed with reduced sight (sandpaper effect on the front window) and reduced IFR instrumentation at night.
Cheers,
-S
Iceland has no significant agriculture.
That's a bit more like it, but Iceland is a welfare state and they'll get by just fine. Meanwhile, the economy of the country as a whole is dependent on fishing, and that will be generally unaffected by this eruption.
"Safety group Eurocontrol"... Eurocontrol is the European air traffic management center.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
We said "Send *cash*"!
except for that whole high alt ash cloud.. that won't block out the stars any, nope
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The last eruption was in 1821 and lasted 2 years... you better get yourself some train tickets if you want to travel in Europe!
Actually, volcano or no volcano, traveling Europe by train is the way to go.
Back when times were good for me, I went to Switzerland, left my luggage in the room, bought a rail pass, left really early, picked a train route, and stopped at every little town the train stopped - and had a beer when I could. Saw some beautiful scenery, pissed off a conductor (I couldn't tell the difference between first and second class! He knew to speak English to me too right off the bat- go figure.), and had the best time.
I just wish Amtrack wasn't the joke that it is. We could do the same here in the US.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
"Having all your engines fail isn't minor, but it isn't on the same scale as an actual crash."
The amount of shear luck involved not to mention skill on the part of the pilots is just over the top.
Having a 747 loose all power and not crash is just short of proof of divine intervention.
Honestly that is probably the worst thing that could happen short of a crash and should be avoided at all costs.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Uhm, I think it has more to do with the jetstream, which spreads the ash cloud over Britain.
It's not intercontinental flights that are shut down. It's ALL air traffic over northwest Europe.
Gesundheit!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
What?
Especially a high-pressure turbojet.
Frankly, the auto engine's filter will handle the worst of it...
This is actually untrue. Actual sand is not a problem for a modern jet engine - if you ever bothered to watch the A380 ads, one of the tests on the engine was when they fed a constant thick stream of fine sand into the intake of a running engine, and it was going just fine. It will certainly stress the engine, but it will keep running just fine for a very long time before sand starts to really wear out the internal mechanics to cause serious damage and shutdown.
Problem is that hot ash is actually not sand (which would not be able to stay that high in the air), but actual hot ash. As a result, as it goes through the engine, it coats the fuel feeding system and as it's rapidly cooled by compressed cold air pre-ignition, it becomes a glass-like material that blocks the fuel from getting into combustion chamber. This is what is causing the engine flameout. The reason why keeping the engine shut, putting plane into descent and keeping on trying to restart the engine is current modus operandi is because the glass-like substance that ash forms on the inside of the engine becomes very brittle when engine is being cooled by fast air stream going through it. As a result, when temperature drops below certain threshold, the normal vibration caused by drag and turbulence shatters the brittle mass, clearing the nozzles and allowing for fuel feeding to work again.
This is what happened in the 747 that lost all 4 of it's engines to flameout when flying through volcanic ash in the past. The report should be available to the general public, at least I recall reading it somewhere (though in finnish). In general, ash doesn't really scratch as much as stick to surfaces and solidify into dark glassy mass (which does in fact block the windows as well, meaning pilots would most likely have to land in instruments-only conditions in addition to handling engine flameouts).
It's a compound word which in the local language basically means "Eyja Mountain Glacier". Eyjamountainglacier.
There pronounce that. :-)
According to a CNN article, the prime minister of Norway is stranded as a result of the resulting travel chaos and "running the Norwegian government from the U.S. via his new iPad".
ALING, Heathrow, Thursday (NTN) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown has condemned Iceland's terrorist attack on British air travel and their refusal to refund tourists' air tickets.
The UK government used anti-terrorism laws to freeze all British-held assets of Umhverfisráðuneyti, the Icelandic Ministry Against the Environment, after minister Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir threatened to further unleash the power of the Katla volcano in the wake of the devastation to school holidays caused by Eyjafjallajökull.
Thousands of confused and angry passengers wandered around Britain's becalmed airports today trying in vain to find out how long the disruption caused by the ash cloud might last. "Can't we just, you know, give the planes a try?" said Brenda Busybody, 54 (IQ), of East Cheam. "I wanted to go and rest on holiday, and Monday I'm back to doing nothing in the office. I pay my licence fee!"
The Prime Minister offered his outrage and sympathy, in lieu of money or anything useful. "This is fundamentally a problem with the Icelandic-registered El-stodth Thyonustah Voweld," said Mr Brown, attempting not to choke on his own tongue. "They have failed the people of Iceland and they have failed the people of Northern Europe! You pay my licence fee! Er, hold on ..."
Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir also offered her sympathies to British travellers. "But, you know, we're still pretty upset about the cod."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
One reason it's not affecting breathing much but is affecting air travel is that it's mostly at high altitude.
The word you're looking for is "vibrant".
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Quite possibly some major changes. Of not is the fact that the increased climate temperature means more mositure uptake in the atmosphere which means more rain and maybe more tornados and warmer seas mean more violent hurricanes. What I haven't heard is a calculation of the effect of a couple of degrees of warmth and the coeficient of thermal expansion of the earths surface rocks. Haven't we seen an uptick in earthquakes, it might also be a contributing factor in more volcanic activity and the rocks re-adjust to their new temperatures and bring more presures to bare on the molten rock below.
renew your library card. At least you will have a place to entertain yourself when transportation is grounded an the electric grid fails.
If Eyja keeps on erupting for long enough maybe transatlantic tunnel becomes real?
Not only that, but if you read the wikipedia article about the flight, they were calculating clearance required to go above, or around high Indonesian mountains, as they descended steadily without power.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Right, but intercontinental air travel going near Europe is canceled as well, at least from Canada. http://www.aircanada.com/en/news/trav_adv/100415.html
I made an app! Shoutium
Was just outside for a fag, and I can still see the big dipper right above me (Chelsea, London) but looking towards Heathrow, the clouds are gathering, and the colour doesn't look good!
This is blinging
I thought Iceland was up near the N. Pole roughly...how is it effecting the UK?
I'm looking for maps, but it doesn't seem to look that close...?
Ok..just found one map...I thought what is Greenland was Iceland...found Iceland which is east of Greenland..but still, doesn't look close enough to Europe in general to mess with it with volcanic ash?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Dear Iceland,
Until you can name a volcano something that the rest of the world can actually pronounce, you will still be considered a terrorist nation. No amount of volcanic ash or glaciers melting (playing up to the global warming crowd) will excuse you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I'm curious as to how you claim that normal street dust is more dangerous. What do you base this on? Volcanic ash is mostly silicates, and based on what happens when you inhale other silicates (Asbestos) I wouldn't be too keen on the substituting volcanic ash for road dust.
It is thought that asbestos is dangerous primarily due to the shape of the crystals. Broken asbestos fibers are essentially electron-microscopically sharp daggers that can slice into a living cell wall and cause the reproducing cell to make faulty copies of its DNA.
Silicates in general may not chemically cause cancer, certain physical structures of the crystals might be responsible. And I'm not saying that volcanic ash contains the "safe" kind or the "bad" kind of crystals. But I don't know that you can accurately make a blanket statement condemning all silicates just because asbestos is a problem.
On the other hand, given the choice I wouldn't want to suck in a lungful of volcanic ash, either.
John
Re: your sig
If you learn of an Apple-Google-Nintendo merger, do not be troubled. For you are in Eyjafjallajokull, and are already dying of volcanic ash!
John
Reminds me of the old adage - "Red sky at night... volcanic ash in the atmosphere."
can wreck the windshield and probably the worst thing is that ash and jet engines don't get along.
I'm not sure what's worse for pilots - broken windshield when they are facing huge blow of wind or no engines.. without engines you can at least sit in the cockpit.
The reason it's getting so much attention is that there are many many flight paths that go near Iceland as it provides a shorter path between the two continents.
Actually everything around Baltic sea is currently no-flight zone. You can check out http://www.flightradar24.com/ to see that there's only single plane over northern part of Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA-cpzGWVwE
First our economy, now this....
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/silicacrystalline/index.html
OSHA seems that exposure to silica in the crystalline form is bad stuff.
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ash/health/#chronic
Volcanoes, like the one in Iceland currently erupting release large amounts of the stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera#Volcanic_hazards
Think of the air traffic delay if Yellowstone went off!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Ridge_Tuff
Here's the anatomy of engine failure due to ash cloud:
1. Ash gets sucked into the engine
2. The ash melts due to the heat of combustion
3. The melted ash/combusted fuel now moves through the various turbine stages
4. As the gas/ash mixture cools, the ash sticks to the turbine blades and turns into glass
5. Engine Failure
The turbine blades in the front have been sandblasted, the turbine blades in the rear are coated in glass, and everything else has been subject to severely unbalanced operation.
Even if you can relight the engines, they will never be airworthy again.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Police arrested an Icelandic man of Nigerian extraction after the flight he was on made an emergency landing when the man, who's name is not known at this time, attempted to cause the eruption of a small volcano hidden in his underpants. Experts say it is unlikely a thermal feature of this size could have brought down the plane, as the amount of magma would have have been too small to cause much damage.
Turning now to Hollywood entertainment....
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Iceland fart in your general direction...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's a big ass cloud. Wind blows to the south-east, so Scandinavia and parts of central Europe is covered by the cloud. If I recall correctly, the little Chernobyl explosion's cloud had the most of Europe covered as well.
It's slightly farther than the distance from Chicago to San Antonio, slightly less than the distance from Chicago to Salt Lake City or El Paso. Tack on prevailing winds...
Check out the satellite imagery. The ash plume can easily reach into Europe.
It dissipates as it goes, but does anybody know the "critical density" before it's a problem?
What crops? And livestock don't generally die because there's ash in the air.
broken windshield when they are facing huge blow of wind
It won't break the windscreen, just sandblast it. Great for bathrooms, not so good for visual approaches.
It's easy to remember which is which. Greenland is almost entirely covered in ice year round, while Iceland is mostly green (in the summer).
The ash cloud also caused harm to the windscreen and landing lights, and smoke filled the cabin. Engines 1, 2 and 3, and the windscreen had to be replaced. Ash also got into the fuel tank, and that had to be flushed, and the contaminated fuel disposed of.
Ash clouds destroy planes, and endanger the lives of all crew and passengers aboard. Understandably, the presence of a massive ash cloud over Europe requires that air travel be shut down, until the cloud has passed.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
It was over northeast Scotland before it ever reached London, and the sunset here was... pretty normal, to be honest. Perhaps slightly more orange than normal, but the light is often very warm-looking shortly before sunset, and if the sky looked slightly dusty at dusk, it's probably only because I was paying close attention.
I was expecting more, to be honest...
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Meanwhile, the economy of the country as a whole is dependent on fishing, and that will be generally unaffected by this eruption.
Personally, I can't stand smoked fish. :-6
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Also know as Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
Which isn't what the parent said. Did you just want to wheel out your A380 advert anecdote? :) The parent said hot ash turning into molten glass-like substance is a problem for engines. Which you disagreed with, then repeated!
I'm looking for maps, but it doesn't seem to look that close...?
Note: rectangular maps of the world distort distances. Rectangular maps use some variant of a cylindrical projection* so as you approach the pole east-west distances appear larger than they really are.
Still it is a bloody big ash cloud (note: also because of winds it's neither circular nor centered on the source).
*The variants differ in how they deal with north/south distances. Mercator's projection (the most common afaict) modifies the north/south distances as well so local shapes are correctly represented. Peters projection modifies north/south distances in the opposite way so it preserves area but distorts local shape even more than a straight cylindrical projection does.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
An automobile's air filter will plug within minutes of being introduced to volcanic ash. Plug to the point of keeping the engine from running.
This was experienced during the Mt. Saint Helen's eruption in the United States. Stores sold out of pantyhose in very short order because people were using them to filter the ash so it wouldn't plug up the regular air filter.
All of that typing and all you had to do was go look up silicosis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
It's VERY BAD for you to breathe in Silica dust whether it's Asbestos based or not. The microscopic crystals plug the lungs and cannot be cleared causing respiratory difficulty or even failure.
It's a compound word: Eyja - Fjalla - Jökull
It's translated: Island - Mountain - Glacier
It's pronounced something like: Eh-ee-ah fee-at-law jeh-coot'l
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
It was a nice sunset here in NL, but nothing wildly spectacular. Then again, sunsets rarely are that. It did look a slight bit more red than usual.
> An automobile's air filter will plug within minutes of being introduced to
> volcanic ash.
Only when there is a great deal of it: enough to impede visibility. The levels we are talking about here might cut the life of your air filter in half. Jet engines are much more sensitive to this sort of dust than internal combustion engines are. They inhale much, much, much more air, it is impossible to filter it, and they run hot enough to melt the silica.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It also doesn't affect breathing as even normal street dust is more dangerous.
It certainly isn't awful, but it stinks like horse crap all over Gothenburg, probably all over the country as well!
As Flight 9 approached Jakarta, the crew found it difficult to see anything through the windscreen, and had to make the approach almost entirely on instruments [...] He then called out how high they should be at each DME step along the final track to the runway, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. It was, in Moody's words, "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse".
British Airways pilots, always classy.
This is clearly a case of cause and effect. The weighty US Health Care Reform Act combined with Global Warming is being catalyzed by a black hole from the LHC. The volcano is the result. Clearly, the World is going to end!
Cue the guy with a bell and a "The End is Nigh" billboard.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=BIKF+to+EGLL
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=BIKF+to+EIDW
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=BIKF+to+ENGM
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=BIKF+to+EKCH
wind doesn't blow southeast all the time, its due to the high pressure zone to the south of the volcano, air in the northern hemisphere goes clockwise around high pressure systems so the system is blowing all the ash clockwise and over those bits of europe. If it was a low pressure system it would be sending it in the opposite direction
Interesting map!
It seems if you want to get out of europe atm you should head by train to italy, spain or poland.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It was an amazing story. The only part of the cockpit windows not sandblasted into frosted windows was a tiny gap at the top protected by something like a sunvisor. The pilot had to stand up while trying to see where the runway was.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Iceland is falling!
Iceland IS falling!
Iceland is FALLING!
All over Europe. Although some will most likely reach Alaska. Thank God Mrs Palin isn't governor anymore. She'd have probably called out the National Guard to attack Iceland.
this 2012 thing, may be real for some reason, even before 2012 :
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
erupting mountain icons are currently erupting volcanoes. sideways Zs are quakes. its going crazy since last 2 months. the activity is parabolically increasing.
numerous strong (>5) quakes are happening worldwide, but they mainly go unreported in media unless someone dies. one near madrid shortly, one in south germany a short while ago, the baja california thing (it was impossible not to report tho), here, there and now china. iceland volcano eruption is getting stronger, and it doesnt seem to be going to subside anytime soon. its possible that a bigger volcano near that can also go active. and they said usgs stopped reporting quakes outside usa.
something is hitting the fan, and it may really be shit.
Read radical news here
I believe that you're wrong about S02 being a green compound. That's the poisonous crap spewed by American factories responsible for the Acid Rain that killed most of the Adirondack Lakes. SO2 is right up there with NO2 as atmospheric pollutants. Certainly SO2 is an atmospheric by-product of volcanoes, but there's already too much in the atmosphere now. Sure it's great for Aunt Emmy's Roses, but bad for Aunt Emmy and her animals. While even NO2 is a natural by-product of lightning, thanks to industrialization, we already have more than enough of that in the atmosphere, too.
I'm not sure about Poland, and why it has plane going to Belorussia right now.
Today (now it's actually deep night - that's why there are so few planes) it was quite empty. However Germany still had lot of planes over it.
There is another, larger, volcano nearby called Katla and ...
"Eyjafjallajokull has blown three times in the past thousand years," Dr McGarvie told The Times, "in 920AD, in 1612 and between 1821 and 1823. Each time it set off Katla." The likelihood of Katla blowing could become clear "in a few weeks or a few months", he said.
Given this, and given that the last eruption was on and off for 2 years, we could have travel interruptions for a while to come.
When this Iceland volcano erupts, nearby Katla always goes up soon after. A major eruption of Katla could give us another "Year without a summer" in the northern hemisphere.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I noticed a few people up above slightly confused about where Iceland is, based on misleading map projections. But WCBS radio (New York) this morning certainly gets the fail-prize for World Geography; their commentator noted how a volcano erupting "halfway around the world" was canceling flights from New York to London.
Nice going, guys. All the Londoners stuck in the airport who were listening now have an even worse opinion of American geographical knolwegde.
If you were a passenger on a 747 and all four engines failed, I bet you'd find it pretty fucking unusual.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
First Bjork, now this. If you keep going like this, you'll soon rival Canada as an evil global threat.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You should check out the videos of the example in progress at Eyjafjallajökull. It's *awesome*. And if you don't know what a jökulhlaup is, it's a huge meltwater flood that is generated by the heat of the volcanic eruption melting the ice beneath a glacier. Eventually the reservoir of water bursts out from beneath the glacier.
Nice maps of the current and earlier Iceland eruption in March can be found at the Nordic Volcanological Center.
North West Europe more than Central Europe I would say, that would include Scandinavia and the UK
You never catch me alive
All flights from Oz to Europe are cancelled
You never catch me alive
Obama and other world leaders may have to miss the funeral of Polish President.
This is only a little volcano, stuffing up air travel for a number of countries. It will compound itself as outlying airports get 'stuffed' with waiting flights or flights that can go no further. However, this could just be the thin end of the wedge. Take a look at Wikipedia about the LAKI volcano in the 1760's, it erupted for TWO YEARS, and a neighboring volcano an extra FIVE YEARS. This allegedly caused MONUMENTAL climate change globally for many years; culminating in famine in Europe that eventually was the pre-cursor to the French Revolution. Other global famines have been attributed to this event too. Let's just hope this one quietens down quickly. Steve - Australia
I wouldn't be too keen on the substituting volcanic ash for road dust.
Yes, and beyond that, there is even a word for the problems it causes:Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
, although silicosis is more common.
Qxe4
it's not the routes over iceland, right now the ash cloud covers large parts of the UK, and the netherlands too, Amsterdam Schiphol airport is currently shut down, no flights what so ever, i imagine large airports in the UK are shut down too, parts of the german and belgian airspace are closed as well..
This really sucks though, my dad had a long weekend in rome planned this weekend, his flight is at 1350 out of schiphol, but KLM has cancelled all flights before 1400, and will probably cancel more later today..
Not to mention all the Danish colleagues here which are no stuck in holland..
People, what a bunch of bastards
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2010/apr/15/volcano-airport-disruption-iceland (click on next below the first image to see how the cloud progresses and how huge it is)
As a German reader, I probably can answer this question. We read them by recognising the individual words. I suppose it is like you would read a normal sentence written without spaces.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Ah yes, the icelandic trout. Most modern airliners now have somke detectors for just such problems.
I've spent some time translating Facebook into a Germanic language (before my workplace blocked access, yay) that also uses "long" words. I can say that the English way (which incidentally is thought to have entered English from French, since Anglic is also a Germanic language) can be confusing too. A simple example: "Publishing account statement": Now is it a statement about a Publishing account, or does it denote the action of publishing (verb) the account statement? (Of course, context would help a lot.) The rule in the Germanic languages is: if it's one thing, it is one word. So in the first instance we would write "Publishingaccountstatement", and in the second instance "Publishing accountstatement".
Of course, our language rules allow hyphenation if it would make things clearer. Many English words have also moved from joined, to hyphenated, to separate over the centuries.
Then of course, one can always restructure one's sentences to avoid unwieldy long words, and write something like "The volcano under the glacier of the mountain named Eyja". Longwinded, but shorter words :-)
On a side note, one should probably include the "dots" on the "o" when searching Wikipedia for Eyjafjallajökull.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
+10 insightful
Well of course it does some steam. The question is : what will they do with that much obsidian ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Bear in mind that there were terminal engine failures during that flight, and the remaining engines were completely stuffed after landing.
The ash melts in the high temp part of a jet engine and condenses to a glass like solid on the rear compressor blades, they were very lucky those engines restarted, and ran long enough for a safe landing.
This is actually untrue. Parent didn't disagree and repeat. He pointed out that the statement was obviously flawed, and explained why it accurately described reality.
British Airways Flight 5390 was a British Airways flight between Birmingham International Airport in England and Málaga, Spain. On 10 June 1990 an improperly installed pane of the windscreen failed, blowing the plane's captain halfway out of the aircraft, with his body firmly pressed against the window frame.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390
Spaces are good for resolving ambigiouty. The best compound words consist of one or two syllable words, if it gets any longer the risk of a ambigious word gets higher and it gets harder to read. In essence it is not that different from english. English also uses many compound words, but they have to get accepted first as words, where in Scandinavian languages you are free to do it yourself and are in fact required to do so by grammatics (there can only be one subject or object in a sentence, and a they can at most be one noun each).
Footnote is a compound english word. In danish it is fodnote. You could refer to the font of a footnote as "footnote font" (two nouns) in english but are required in danish to call it "fodnotefont" (one noun), but only context makes it possible to tell the difference between "foot notefont" and "foodnote font".
Yes this does make scrable more fun ;)
Just last monday, the nation got a report from parliament's investigative committee, that details the causes of the collapse here. This includes the part that the bank robbers, paralyzed government and incompetent agencies played. I think what happened last wednesday was that Satan got a look at that report. Here's a picture to prove it.
Don't know why OP got a troll mod, he's right that the oligarchs should have been taken care of a long time ago.
So the problems that are presented by the volcano ash to the modern day jet engines should not cause any real trouble for propeller aircraft and even less to balloon or dirigibles.
Of-course we don't have any dirigibles for commercial mass air travel and most propeller aircraft have been out of circulation for decades now.
I imagine that some propeller aircraft could be brought back for this, but what would the tickets cost?
You can't handle the truth.
What? Do they fly out their data packages by airplane? That would certainly explain the fleet battle lag...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Terror? More like inconvenience.
This eruption can go on for months, even years. To add insult to injury eruptions in Ejafjallajökull have historically been foreplay for eruptions in Mt. Katla which is a 100 square kilometer caldera that lies under nearby Mýrdalsjökull glacier. That eruption will be orders of magnitude bigger than this one. When Katla blows, and there is a good chance she will do so within the next two or three years or so if history is to be trusted, you can pretty much kiss air-traffic over much of Europe, or North America goodbye. Whose turn it is to not fly for a week or so at a time will depend on the wind direction and trust me, the economic damage of only being able to fly every other week for six months to a year is more than a mere "inconvenience".
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Some people have a tendency to split Norwegian words that shouldn't be - sometimes changing the meaning altogether: "Tunfiskbiter i vann" : tuna chunks in water, says the can label. The store may write a poster that says "Tunfisk biter i vann" -tuna fish bites in water. Or "lammelår" - legs of lamb - becomes "lamme lår" - paralyzed legs. Gaah.
Why can't the planes just fly lower than 20,000 ft until they are out from under the cloud of ash? Then adjust to normal cruising altitude.
"Red sky at night... volcanic ash in the atmosphere."
Rhyming fail. The correct adage is:
Red sky at night - Iceland alight!
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
A nice picture here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-volcano-plume.html Check also the official UK advisory with 'affected area' maps http://metoffice.com/aviation/vaac/vaacuk_vag.html
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Iceland being more or less halfway between the main continents of the western civilization, means that the northen part of the american continent may be affected directly (directly, as in visible ash on the sky, and stuffed in the engines); see this animation http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/dmi_foelger_asken_fra_grimsvotn (text in danish) from the Danish Meteorologic Institute for an event of little over 5 years ago. Unless you want to start using zepellins all over again, I suggest you, for one, welcome your Icelandic overlords.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
IANAAE (an aviation expert), but it's my understanding that jet engines are designed explicitly to run at around 30-35,000 feet and are very inefficient otherwise.
I'm sure there are other reasons that people could add...