Grounded for Decades?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Ash induced chaos continues in Europe.  The impact is now more than stranded tourists.

...but the economic damage will roll through to farms, retail establishments and nearly any other business that depends on air cargo shipments. Fresh produce will spoil, and supermarkets in Europe, used to year-round supplies, will begin to run out.

And the US military is feeling the heat.

The shutdown has also affected American military operations. Military
supplies for operations in Afghanistan have been disrupted, and a
spokeswoman for the Pentagon said that all medical evacuation flights
from Iraq and Afghanistan to Germany, where most injured soldiers are
typically treated, were being diverted directly to Andrews Air Force
Base in Maryland.

Within the European Command, some routine resupply missions and movement
of personnel missions have been diverted or delayed, she said.

And for the first time scientists admit it could go on for weeks or months.

The volcano, meanwhile, continued to defy predictions. Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, said the average span of a volcanic eruption is a month or two. In the case of Iceland�s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, he said, scientists need to know more about how much molten rock is beneath it, but concluded, �We could see intermittent activity over the coming months.�

But could it be even worse?  According to this article in The New Scientist we could be looking at decades of trouble.

We're not quite back to the pre-plane era, but air travel over and around the north Atlantic might get a lot more disrupted in the coming years.

Volcanologists say the fireworks exploding from the Eyjafjallaj�l volcano on Iceland, which is responsible for the ash cloud that is grounding all commercial flights across northern Europe, may become a familiar sight. Increased rumblings under Iceland over the past decade suggest that the area is entering a more active phase, with more eruptions and the potential for some very large bangs.

"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet.

.......

Judging by recent volcanic and earthquake activity, Thordarson and his
colleagues believe that Iceland is entering its next active phase and
estimate it will last for 60 years or so, peaking between 2030 and 2040.

The current eruption is from one of many vents along a rift zone that includes many larger vents including Laki which erupted in 1783 and changed history.  Of course there is an upside - all that ash will probably slow global warming.