The clock is ticking away for scientists and aircraft engineers in their quest to find ways of avoiding volcanic dust or detecting it early enough to evade it. Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull, the eruption of which severely disrupted air travel earlier this year, has quietened for the moment. Its volcanic neighbour Katla, just 12 miles to the east, has a long history of related eruptions and is considered a far bigger threat.
Typically it erupts every eighty years; the last time was in 1918. On the last three occasions Eyjafjallajokull blew its top Katla erupted soon afterwards. The last time it erupted Katla followed 6.5 months later. If it blows then climate change is inevitable and international travel is likely to be severely affected.
America in Deep Freeze
USA Today reports that when Katla vented in the 1700s North America quickly went into the refrigerator. Garry Hufford, a scientist with the U.S. Alaska Region of the National Weather Services says: “The Mississippi River froze just north of New Orleans, and the East Coast, especially New England, had an extremely cold winter.”
Katla lies out of sight under the Myrdalsjokull glacier. If it were to blow then the effects of super-heated lava and ice would throw up curtains of ash reaching the highest altitudes. This would be followed by severe climate change affecting crops and interfering with the communications infrastructures of the developed nations.
A report in the Detroit Free Press claims; “A Katla eruption would be 10 times longer and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash than its smaller neighbour.”
Biblical Scale Flooding
On a more sobering note the correlation of data on volcanoes is still in its infancy. Accurate predictions will be difficult and dependent upon much guesswork until scientists and geologists, working together with scientists can detect and understand better the magma channels that form with each eruption and their likely consequences.
There is however general agreement that if there is a significant eruption from Katla the effects caused by melting ice will have a knock-on consequence far more serious than that caused by the Eyjafjallajokull eruption.
Such phenomena can last for over a year. The 1821 eruption of this volcano was ongoing for about 13 months. The jury is still out on the economic outcome of a large scale eruption but both Europe and North America are vulnerable during what is already a difficult period of change. If this gives causes for concern have a thought for the Icelandic population. Last time Katla blew it was followed by cataclysmic floods of almost biblical scale affecting the nation’s populated areas.
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