Slashdot Mirror
Iceland Raises Volcano Aviation Alert Again
An anonymous reader writes Iceland's authorities have raised an aviation warning for a region close to the Bardarbunga volcano after a small fissure eruption in the area. The eruption began around 0600 GMT prompting the Icelandic Met Office to raise the aviation warning code to red for the Bardarbunga/Holuhraun area, the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management said in a statement. The country's meteorological agency described the eruption as a "very calm lava eruption and can hardly be seen on seismometers."
This can affect a lot of planes flying to and from Europe, and can cost airlines millions of dollars in cancellations, delays, and rerouted flights. However it is imperative that airlines avoid the area as ash can wreak havoc on a jet engine and its turbine blades. Best case scenario is the engine flames out and can be restarted once the ash cloud is exited; worst case is that it cannot be restarted and if you lose multiple engines you might wind up losing the aircraft.
Why is the time of eruption quoted in GMT? I don't think any observatory "keeps" GMT anymore. Don't forget that GMT is as much a method of deriving time as it is the time itself. GMT used astronomical observations, while UTC is kept by using ensembles of atomic clocks, all cross-compared between international standards organizations.
Frankly, I'm shocked that Iceland extends pilots licenses to volcanoes. That seems like a terrible idea.
Who did what now?
If I'm not entirely mistaken, volcano ash eruptions like that also affects the weather.
We had an ICE-COLD 2010 winter with record breaking low temperatures that year. I'd rather not have another wolf-winter.
Guess it's not my call.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
this is Putin's fault then or?
I feel embarrassed every time I see an English-language site render this as "Bardarbunga", when that "d" should be "th". Yes, the letter "eth" looks like a lowercase d with a crossbar and erectile dysfunction, but it's pronounced like "th".
They should render the a-with-diacritic as "au", too. (Maybe even take the "g" to a "k".) But while there's a long and stupid tradition of dropping diacritics without rewriting the vowel, there's no damn excuse for getting it this badly wrong when you've got to replace a letter that simply doesn't exist in your target alphabet.
In light of the incidents with Eyjafjallajökull and Bardarbunga, I wonder if it would be possible to issue trade embargos on words longer than 10 characters to limit the prevalence of these volcanoes.
No, I would have have a federal judge rule that the volcano must stop. Look at all the US-made aircraft that would be affected if the eruption is allowed to continue.
Barak should get real houked up and sign an Executive Order on Deportation and deport himself to Kenya.
Only if.. But as bad as BHOS (Barack Hussien Obama Soetero) is, you REALLY don't want Joe Biden as Pres.... They come as a matched
set..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
The newest eruption is at Holuhraun, which is only 9 letters. And if it gets all the way to Askja, that's an easy 5 ;)
Could chocolate let me finish?
Or for an English example volcano, "Yellowstone" (11 letters).
To an Icelandic speaker who knows the component words, it's obvious where they split. Eyja (of islands) Fjalla (of mountains) Jökull (glacier), easy as pie. Their brain automatically cues into the "a"s as context clues for splits to make it even easier.
But picture a person who doesn't speak English at all who sees yellowstone. So they don't know the word "yellow" and they don't know the word "stone". Nor do they know what letter clusters are common together in English - or example, "st" - and which ones are not - for example, "ws". To them it'd be just the same thing, they don't see where to split it, and thus the word looks like a jumble of letters.
Could chocolate let me finish?
All for nothing?
Could chocolate let me finish?
The Met Office's decisions have all been perfectly cogent, it's only the poor reporting that's led to confusion from lay people.
In the first case there were all signs of an eruption under the glacier. They issued an alert. Later there were no signs on the surface, so they removed it. Later on, glacial subsidence proved that an eruption had indeed taken place, but stopped. In both cases, correct behavior on their part.
Then there was the 1st Holuhraun eruption. When an eruption begins, theres no way to know how its going to evolve, but since it was just a lava eruption, it was only restricted on instrument-only flight and only to 5000 feet. When it died down, they removed it. Again, right call by the Met Office.
Then there was the 2nd Holuhraun eruption. Again, 5000 foot instrument-only restriction, and when it steadied out, they removed the restriction (yes, the Slashdot article is wrong, the restriction has long been removed). Again, right call by the Met Office.
People need to stop armchair quarterbacking, they're doing the right thing.
Could chocolate let me finish?
You can watch it live on webcam: http://www.livefromiceland.is/... (general view) http://www.livefromiceland.is/... (close up)
"Putin" is less than 10 letters long.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The problem was that engine manufacturers hadn't specified levels of airborne ash below which it was considered safe to run their engines, because they hadn't done the appropriate tests, because no one had asked them to document this aspect of their behaviour. So, nobody knew (to the degree that they were willing to risk killing several hundred of their passengers in an experiment) whether or not it was safe to fly. And caution ruled.
Look at what is happening to Malaysian Airlines after two crashes in a few months. One we just don't know what happened ; the other is in no way MA's fault (given normal airline practice at the time). But that's not stopping them from going bust, their staff being laid off, andeveryone suffering.
Do you have the balls (or cunt, if you're anatomically female) to take the risk of destroying your company? Oh, sorry, dumb question ; you're an AC ; of course you don't have the balls (or cunt) to back up your carping.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"