This has me very worried about my summer travel plans, and whether I'll end up having to spend a lot of extra money to make last minute adjustments in order to reach my destinations.... The last time this happened (1821 or so I guess) it continued for a whole year! That was way before airplanes so naturally it didn't matter so much. I get the impression that most volcanos in the world are not of this type or don't have a glacier on top of them placed just so, and that the little glass-like particles causing the problems are not a feature of most eruptions? Hopefully the wind patterns are not completely constant, and we'll have periods where it's not all blowing toward Europe.
I hadn't realized that the glacier was relevant here - I thought that was only preventing the SO2 global cooling, and causing devastating floods in the relevant part of Iceland. (They've got a great word - jökullhlaups - for when a volcano erupts under a glacier and everything is destroyed in a flood
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I also hope this will be done within a month, which is when my summer air travel begins.
What I wonder is, what's the difference between this volcanic eruption and the fairly regular eruptions that happen with Mt. Etna. The last one was only three or four years ago and one of them in the last ten years had enough of a lava flow to destroy the ski lifts and tourism center two-thirds of the way up the mountain. Something is making this current eruption cause more ash than Etna -- maybe the glacier has something to do with it, but I think it's more a matter of scale and just differences in volcanoes: some erupt for months on end, other get it over with short and quick. The silica, I believe, is always a problem with volcanic ash.
What I've read about volcanic eruptions in the past says that it at least partly depends on whether the eruption is from a hot spot or a subduction zone. Hot spots tend to have pure magma coming up, while subduction zones often have a lot of water and sediments mixed in. With pure magma you get what they call "Hawaiian" eruptions, where the lava makes nice glowing fountains and flows fairly smoothly, often for a long time. With the water and sediments you get various stoppages and explosions, which I think are called "Plinian" eruptions (like the one Pliny described at Vesuvius).
However, I think Iceland is a hot spot and Etna is subduction, so I don't know how "ash" fits into all this. I think we can all be thankful that the eruption is not like the Toba catastrophe, which apparently was a volcano in Indonesia that deposited 15 cm of ash across all of India (and presumably the Indian ocean too).
Oh yes - assuming all continues according to plan, I land at LHR at 7:10 am on Monday, 10 May. Some time that afternoon I take a train to Manchester to visit Yuni. On Thursday, 13 May I take a train up to Stirling to participate in a conference. And then on Sunday, 16 May, I fly from Edinburgh to San Francisco, via LHR.
If you're in London, we should met up on the Monday. Otherwise, maybe it's convenient for you to get to Manchester?
Since I haven't yet arranged the train travel, I have some flexibility on the times and perhaps even dates there.
*stops keenly sharpening his knives and growls in frustration and rage*
Damn you Dr. Easwaran! Daaaamn yoooou!
I arrive back at Bristol (other side of the country) from Paris on the evening of the 10th. I then have a lot of work to do. And meanwhile you flee north. Hmm. You shall come again. You SHALL come again.
Wait...did you say 'Yuni'? You...don't perchance mean Yuni Kim from Lawrenceville, do you? O_o
And yes I do mean that Yuni - she was in grad school at Berkeley for almost exactly the same years as I was, but in the linguistics department. Now she's lecturing at Manchester.
Flight impossibility just emphasizes the fact that many of the available alternatives don't exist. Here in Lyon, it is still possible to get around on trains to your final destination (though many are very booked right now). However, any option over water just seems silly. There are virtually no transatlantic passenger ships or even routes across the mediterranean to Africa or the Middle East (I suppose Morocco is the exception).
Of course, there's good reason for this - I believe it takes multiple days to get from Spain to the UK by boat, and weeks to get across the Atlantic. If air travel is normally possible, no one is going to do that, except the few crew on shipping vessels. I suppose sea travel is faster than horse-drawn transport, but it's slower than rail, automobile, or any other modern ground transport, all of which are substantially slower than air.
But maybe this just indicates that we really should have been looking into surface-based alternatives several decades ago, rather than putting all our long-distance transportation eggs in the air travel basket.
than rail, automobile, or any other modern ground transport, all of which are substantially slower than air
If you consider travel from departure to arrival, then, yes, rail is slower than air. But the amount of preprocessing (checkin, security, even just how long it takes to board) and post-processing (disembarking, baggage claim) makes air much slower than rail in much of Europe. Before TGV, the Paris-Lyon route was nearly all served by air; now 90% of passengers take the train. Similar phenomena occured around France, as well as Paris-Brussels, Madrid-Barcelona, Frankfurt-Cologne, etc. And train is only going to get faster with the AGV, which will soon be giving airlines a run for the money on a lot of profitable lines (Paris-London, for example).
And yet Americans insist on not investing on train transportation because... I do not know. Just like they insist on not having public health care, or in not being a civilized country over all.
Because I love pleasing everyone, it may be relevant to note that Katla, another subglacial volcano, has always erupted when Eyjafjallajökull has, and with much more length and intensity, and locals are predicting it may do so within the next week. (Also, maps here. (FLX means Flight Level X, or X*100 feet
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What I wonder is, what's the difference between this volcanic eruption and the fairly regular eruptions that happen with Mt. Etna. The last one was only three or four years ago and one of them in the last ten years had enough of a lava flow to destroy the ski lifts and tourism center two-thirds of the way up the mountain. Something is making this current eruption cause more ash than Etna -- maybe the glacier has something to do with it, but I think it's more a matter of scale and just differences in volcanoes: some erupt for months on end, other get it over with short and quick. The silica, I believe, is always a problem with volcanic ash.
Reply
However, I think Iceland is a hot spot and Etna is subduction, so I don't know how "ash" fits into all this. I think we can all be thankful that the eruption is not like the Toba catastrophe, which apparently was a volcano in Indonesia that deposited 15 cm of ash across all of India (and presumably the Indian ocean too).
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WHERE EXACTLY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND WILL YOU BE?
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If you're in London, we should met up on the Monday. Otherwise, maybe it's convenient for you to get to Manchester?
Since I haven't yet arranged the train travel, I have some flexibility on the times and perhaps even dates there.
Reply
Damn you Dr. Easwaran! Daaaamn yoooou!
I arrive back at Bristol (other side of the country) from Paris on the evening of the 10th. I then have a lot of work to do. And meanwhile you flee north. Hmm. You shall come again. You SHALL come again.
Wait...did you say 'Yuni'? You...don't perchance mean Yuni Kim from Lawrenceville, do you? O_o
Reply
And yes I do mean that Yuni - she was in grad school at Berkeley for almost exactly the same years as I was, but in the linguistics department. Now she's lecturing at Manchester.
Reply
Flight impossibility just emphasizes the fact that many of the available alternatives don't exist. Here in Lyon, it is still possible to get around on trains to your final destination (though many are very booked right now). However, any option over water just seems silly. There are virtually no transatlantic passenger ships or even routes across the mediterranean to Africa or the Middle East (I suppose Morocco is the exception).
Reply
But maybe this just indicates that we really should have been looking into surface-based alternatives several decades ago, rather than putting all our long-distance transportation eggs in the air travel basket.
Reply
If you consider travel from departure to arrival, then, yes, rail is slower than air. But the amount of preprocessing (checkin, security, even just how long it takes to board) and post-processing (disembarking, baggage claim) makes air much slower than rail in much of Europe. Before TGV, the Paris-Lyon route was nearly all served by air; now 90% of passengers take the train. Similar phenomena occured around France, as well as Paris-Brussels, Madrid-Barcelona, Frankfurt-Cologne, etc. And train is only going to get faster with the AGV, which will soon be giving airlines a run for the money on a lot of profitable lines (Paris-London, for example).
Reply
And yet Americans insist on not investing on train transportation because... I do not know. Just like they insist on not having public health care, or in not being a civilized country over all.
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