Volcanic Fallout
In another postcard I wrote about how I had decided against taking a trip to the World Exhibition of Sustainable Mountain Development in Grenoble, France, at the end of April, as a result of the Easter Revolution.
As it happens, even if I hadn’t taken that decision, I almost certainly would have had problems making the journey.
I had been booked to leave on a flight early in the morning of April 19th. John, a friend of mine was also due to leave Kyrgyzstan. He was returning to Britain and was booked on a flight departing on the 18th, one day before I was scheduled to take off. He received a telephone call from the airline, however, on the morning of the day before to say that the flight had been cancelled and that he had to rearrange his travel plans to fly a week later.
Although the events of April 7th had caused the airport to close for a while, resulted in the cancellation of several flights, and Uzbekistan had even turned flights back refusing to accept travelers from Bishkek, the fact that this flight was cancelled had nothing to do with the Easter Revolution. It was all due to the fact that, less than a week before, on the 14th, a volcano in south western Iceland had erupted. The eruption sent tons and tons of ash into the atmosphere, to a height of 30000 feet, (over 9km), which is the altitude at which long haul flights cruise as they make their way from one city to another and that caused the authorities to ground virtually all flights throughout Europe, bringing chaos to the travel plans of millions. John was one of those millions … and if I had not cancelled my plans, then I would have been just another one.
Those who were going to the exhibition, (like Ludmila, who went to represent our company), were able to leave from Manas airport in Bishkek without any problems, even though many other flights to Europe had already been cancelled. It didn’t do her much good, however, because having got to Moscow, she was not able to fly onto France for the second leg of the journey as the airports in France were closed. Being stranded in Moscow on an enforced “lay over” wasn’t in the plan and may have caused a few problems … but not as many as it would have caused for me. If I had gone, then, being British, I would have needed a Russian visa. As a transit passenger, with the two legs of the journey using the same airport, I didn’t need one, and so wouldn’t have applied for one.
As it happened, she managed to arrive in France – several hours late and completely exhausted – having got herself onto a flight to Rome, (where the airport was still open), and traveling by train, via Milan. Ludmila is very resourceful and determined, so I not too surprised that she actually managed to get there only hours late … but exactly how she managed to get to Rome is a mystery to me … I thought the ticket she had allowed no changes, so maybe Aeroflot have proved to be extremely responsive to a “crisis” … I am impressed … it’s not exactly in keeping with their reputation. She was met by Joelle and Nicole, two of our former clients, and I know that she would have been delighted to have seen them under normal conditions, but under the circumstances she must have been doubly delighted.
The name which is being used to refer to the volcanic eruption that caused all this chaos is, Eyjafjallajoekull. This is actually, however, the name of a glacier not of a volcano, as you might have assumed … as I assumed to begin with. Apparently, the “jokull” at the end of the word means glacier in Icelandic. The eruption is occurring under the glacier as the North American plate of the earth’s crust and the Eurasian plate move away from each other, causing earthquakes and allowing magma to rise from below the crust through the fissure that is created. The fact that it is happening under a glacier has meant that the addition of the melt water has actually added to the force of the eruption. Despite this, the geologists are apparently saying that the eruption is not a particularly large one.
Even if it was not a large eruption it was having a huge effect. This is probably largely due to the location, situated as it is under a busy patch of sky which is used by many different air corridors and also being in the path of the gulf stream and it’s associated wind patterns. The plume of gas and ash which is being pumped into the sky is not only reaching the altitude used by those air corridors, the winds carried it Westwards, towards Northern Europe.
The gas, according to the experts, is not particularly dangerous, although the ash carries with it many different threats.
First of all, the reason that flights were cancelled was that it can cause damage to aircraft and their engines. Indeed, flying through clouds of volcanic ash has caused several planes to almost crash. I remember watching a fascinating episode of Air Crash Investigation on the National Geographic Channel about one of them, a British Airways flight to Australia.
But, that’s not all … although it is thought unlikely in this particular case as a lot depends on the composition of the ash and proximity to the eruption … the ash could, when it eventually falls to earth, cause: health problems, (respiratory diseases such as asthma and lung diseases, eyes, skin irritations and even physical motor coordination); interfere with agriculture, (leading to crop failures, disease amongst livestock); cause problems for buildings, (for example, roofs collapsing under the weight of accumulated ash); communications, (telephone systems, radio); transport (not just to airlines, but also affecting road conditions – visibility, causing slippery surfaces and so on); and to various indispensable aspects of our infrastructure, (power systems, water supply and sewerage).
One of the more dramatic and well known examples of the power of volcanic ash occurred in 79AD when Mount Etna in Italy destroyed the nearby twin Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The cities were basically covered in hours, killing the entire population who were largely caught unawares. The remains were basically lost under the ash for almost 1600 years, until they were accidentally discovered in 1592.
Perhaps more worrying is the possible effect clouds of volcanic ash resulting from eruptions can have on the climate – and the resulting social impact. There have been several occasions in the past when volcanic eruptions have led to a “year with no summer” and have caused the earth’s mean temperature to fall by anything up to a degree – and in the case of Tambora, by five degrees. (To put this into context, remember that we now consider a rise in global temperature of between 4 and 6 degrees as a likely outcome of the current trend towards Global Warming).
For example, in 1783 Benjamin Franklin was on his way to take up his post as the Ambassador of the United States to France, and he described how the eruption of Hekla in Iceland caused a “dry fog” which blocked out the heat of the sun’s rays, causing crop failures, (which in turn led to shortages and rising prices), and was to be followed by a severe winter. All of these are quoted by historians as conditions that contributed to the causes of the French Revolution.
Another eruption in 1258, somewhere in the tropics, (we are not sure exactly where it was located), a volcano exploded violently producing a veil that eventually blanketed the globe. Evidence from the Arctic and Antarctic ice cores suggest that this was the world’s largest volcanic eruption of the past millennium. According to accounts written at the time, the resulting “dry fog” was experienced in Europe as a persistently cloudy sky through which an eclipse of the moon was totally obscured as the sky was so dark. The frequent cold and rain that year led to severe crop damage and subsequent famine throughout much of Europe. Pestilence and plague broke out repeatedly in the following years and there was another very cold winter in1260–1261. Some historians point to it as being among the causes of the wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes and even of the rise of the “flagellant” movement, (surely, one of the most bizarre social phenomena of the Middle Ages).
Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa in what is now Indonesia, erupted in 1815. An entire mountain peak, comprising some 12 cubic miles, was propelled into the air and noise from the eruption was heard 800km away on the island of Java. Snow fell in the Northern hemisphere in June, and 1816 is still known in America as the “year without a summer”. Famine and plague were experienced in various parts around the world, from Europe to China. It is claimed that it led to the invention of the bicycle as an attempt to deal with the problems of keeping and feeding horses as a result of the lack, or price of hay. Also on the “positive” side, the volcanic clouds are thought have been responsible for the atmospheric conditions which Turner immortalized in many of his evocative paintings, and also to have inspired poems by Byron, and led to the creation of the novel Frankenstein.
The Tambora eruption was larger by far than that at Krakatoa – East of Java, (as the film was subtitled), but Krakatoa is probably better known, probably because it occurred after the invention and widespread distribution of the telegraph system as a means of communication.
The most significant eruption, however, was probably that of Mount Toba, in northern Sumatra, (also in Indonesia), some 75,000 years ago. The resulting ash cloud is blamed for a “volcanic winter” which lasted for six years and a cooling of the earth which lasted for about 1,000 years. Some historians even think that the human race almost became extinct as a result, as numbers dwindled to somewhere around 10,000, and possibly as low as 5000 people.
Indeed, until the currently accepted theory associating the demise of the dinosaurs with a meteorite impact, it was thought that their extinction was the result of a massive volcanic eruption.
When seen on the scale of these events then, (at least at the moment), the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption does not seem to be a particularly severe event … but we’ll have to wait and see. I suppose it all depends on if the other volcanoes in the vicinity are affected, (but there doesn’t appear to be any sign of that at the moment); the prevailing weather patterns; how much debris gets cast into the atmosphere; the composition of the ash and how long it last.
It is not possible to predict how long the Eyjafjallajoekull eruption would last, when or where the dust will settle, or when life will return to normal (with flights resuming to their published schedules, and so on). A volcanic eruption may last a few days, or several months and the seismic activity which led to the Tombora eruption in 1815 may well have started as early as in 1810.
If the eruption subsides soon, then the incident will probably be remembered in the future as just an inconvenience – a disruptive influence for a short period. If it continues, however, for a significant length of time, then we can expect to see disruptions to many different aspects of our daily lives … with the possibly that it will lead to many potentially quite serious, consequences.
In a way, at least for us, it has already started. We are receiving cancellations in our hotels as people cannot travel. At the moment, however, we have no cancellations for tours, although I can’t help speculating what effect it will have on the number of visitors we can expect this year. The prognosis for the coming year was already somewhat depressed with the number of enquiries we’ve received being lower than in previous years as a consequence of the Global Economic Crisis. Although there are sign of the crisis abating on the world scale, it still exerts a negative influence on travel plans that needed to have been put in place some time ago … at a time when the crisis was at its height. The numbers of tourists we could hope to expect have been hit further by cancellations as a result of the Easter Revolution. Now, it seems as we can expect yet more cancellations as a result of people being unable to travel … all due to volcanic activity in Iceland.
In a way it strikes me as ironic that we should be affected in this way by a volcano, because at one time in the nineteenth century, it was thought in Europe that the The Tien Shan Mountains, which form the backbone of Kyrgyzstan, was the result of volcanic activity. It was only after the Russian explorer Pyotr Semyenov traveled extensively in the region that he was able to confirm that there were no volcanoes at all in the range.
Volcanoes are one of the few things that Kyrgyzstan doesn’t have to offer the interested tourist.
Bishkek