Volcanic ash is fragments of magma, and consists of minerals and volcanic glass. These materials in the ash can provide important information on the nature of the magma, because chemical compositions of magma usually show distinct features in each volcano, and because assemblages and compositions of minerals reflect their host melt. Using assemblages and chemical compositions of minerals and gl...

Introduction Airborne volcanic ash is a major aviation, health, and infrastructure hazard. When ingested into aircraft engines, volcanic ash can cause engine damage or failure. For example, in December 1989, a 747 jetliner carrying 231 passengers encountered an ash cloud during an eruption of the Mount Redoubt volcano, located southwest of Anchorage, AK. Within 60 seconds of encountering the he...

15 During the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull on Iceland in April/May 2010, air traffic over Europe 16 was repeatedly interrupted because of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. This completely 17 unusual situation in Europe leads to the demand of improved crisis management, e.g. 18 European wide regulations of volcanic ash thresholds and improved forecasts of theses 19 thresholds. However, the quality...

The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland) and the 2011 eruptions of Grimsvötn (Iceland), Cordon Caulle (Chile) and Nabro (Ethiopia) have drastically heightened the level of awareness in the general population of how volcanic activity can affect everyday life by disrupting air travel. The ingestion of airborne volcanic matter into jet turbines may cause harm by (1) abrasion of engine parts...

Shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, particularly those already impaired by anthropogenic pressures, may be highly sensitive to disturbances from natural catastrophic events, such as volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions expel large quantities of silicate ash particles into the atmosphere, which can disperse across millions of square kilometres and deposit into coral reef ecosystems....

BACKGROUND On 20 March 2010, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted for the first time in 190 years. Despite many epidemiological reports showing effects of volcanic ash on the respiratory system, there are limited data evaluating cellular mechanisms involved in the response to ash. Epidemiological studies have observed an increase in respiratory infections in subjects and populations e...

Volcanic activity is observed worldwide with a variety of ground and space-based remote sensing instruments, each with advantages and drawbacks. No single system can give a comprehensive description of eruptive activity, and so, a multi-sensor approach is required. This work integrates infrared and microwave volcanic ash retrievals obtained from the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG...

Surface transportation networks are critical infrastructure that are frequently affected by volcanic ash fall. Disruption to surface transportation from volcanic ash is often complex with the severity of impacts influenced by a vast array of parameters including, among others, ash properties such as particle size and deposit thickness, meteorological conditions, pavement characteristics, and mi...

The ingestion of volcanic ash by jet engines is widely recognized as a potentially fatal hazard for aircraft operation. The high temperatures (1,200-2,000 °C) typical of jet engines exacerbate the impact of ash by provoking its melting and sticking to turbine parts. Estimation of this potential hazard is complicated by the fact that chemical composition, which affects the temperature at which v...

[1] Water is the dominant component of volcanic gas emissions, and water phase transformations, including the formation of ice, can be significant in the dynamics of volcanic clouds. The effectiveness of volcanic ash particles as ice-forming nuclei (IN) is poorly understood and the sparse data that exist for volcanic ash IN have been interpreted in the context of meteorological, rather than vol...