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SUMMARY:The 2010 Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull: Interaction between volcan
 ic plumes and the wind and consequences for modelling airborne ash hazard 
 to aviation - Jerry Phillips\, Dept of Earth Sciences\, Bristol
DTSTART:20130314T113000Z
DTEND:20130314T123000Z
UID:TALK42332@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Catherine Pearson
DESCRIPTION:The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull caused a paradigm shift
  in the importance of small volcanic eruptions to commercial aviation and 
 societal infrastructure. The atmospheric wind dispersed fine volcanic ash 
 at low levels over Northern Europe\, resulting in closure of airspace for 
 six days and estimated direct losses in excess of 1 Billion €. In this t
 alk I will summarise the consequences of volcanic ash injection into the a
 tmosphere for aviation\, the role of Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres (VAAC) 
 in forecasting ash hazard\, and the inputs required for their dispersion m
 odelling. I will then present a predictive model of volcanic plumes that d
 escribes the bending over of the plume trajectory in a cross-wind and show
  that model predictions are in accord with a dataset of historic eruptions
  if the profile of atmospheric wind shear is described. The wind restricts
  the rise height of volcanic plumes\, such that an order of magnitude incr
 ease in source mass flux is required to match the rise height of a plume i
 n a quiescent environment. This effect can lead to significant under-predi
 ction of the mass of volcanic ash input into VAAC dispersion modelling. Th
 e model can account for the variations in plume height observed during the
  first explosive phase of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption using indepe
 ndently measured wind speeds\, and this suggests that changes in the obser
 ved plume height are better explained by changing meteorology than abrupt 
 changes in the source mass flux. 
LOCATION:Open Plan Area\, BP Institute\, Madingley Rise CB3 0EZ
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