Chaos-creating giant Icelandic ash just a training exercise?

Tourism in Iceland may have been boosted in the long run by the giant ash cloud that caused aviation chaos earlier this year but could that event be a repeat, perhaps just a prelude to even worse storms?
 

Not everyone agrees with some experts who say that another volcanic eruption on Iceland could happen again soon, but most though not all think it will likely cause much less chaos than the one in April.
 

The giant Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that caused aviation chaos in earlier this year was "just a training exercise" compared with the potential impact of a bigger eruption, according to one expert.
 

"Larger events are less frequent but they will occur," said volconologist Haraldur Sigurdsson, according to the Sydney Morning Traveler.
 

During its peak in the week after it began erupting on April 14, the hard-to-pronounce Eyjafjoell volcano spewed enough ash to cause the biggest European airspace shutdown since World War II. It impacted more than 100,000 flights and eight million passengers.
 

The shutdown cost the aviation industry worldwide approximately US$1.7 billion, said Daniel Cellaja, director of air transport of the European Commission.
 

"This is what the earth is capable of and will do from time to time," Sigurdsson told scientists and airline industry experts gathered at a conference in Keflavik, southwest of the capital.
 

That is what experts expected would happen in Katla, Eyjafjallajokull’s neighboring volcano, which is much larger and historically erupts within a year or so of Eyjafjallajokull, said expert Armann Hoskuldsson.
 

But the smaller Eyjafjallajokull volcano, whose ash affected more than a hundred thousand flights in April and May, was very different, he said. “The particles were so fine that they did not settle.They were absolutely not coming down," and they were determined to travel to Europe, he pointed out.
 

Other experts at a recent conference agreed that Iceland’s next eruption would not likely not have the same characteristics as the last eruptions.
 

“No two volcanoes are the same and no two eruptions are the same,” said William Aspinall, a geophysicist at Britain’s University of Bristol.
 

For European airspace to suffer similar consequences as last time, the next eruption would need to be as explosive as the last eruption and meteorological conditions would also need to follow similar patterns, he said.
 

“The conditions have to be right. The volcano has to erupt at the right time, the wind has to blow in the right direction, stay in the right direction for a right amount of time to get the conditions we had,” with Eyjafjallajokull, he told the conference.
 

Airline industry representatives called for a more co-ordinated response in the wake of the next eruption.
 

The controversial question of whether the closing of airspace was necessary came up again at the conference.
 

Nancy Graham, the director of the International Civil Aviation Organization, said ash-induced shutdowns were a "global event that needed a global response.” Graham called for the development of scientific criteria by which to judge ash distribution and whether air space closure is necessary.
 

Tourism was also down in Iceland after the event.
 

Ian Neale, Regent Holidays’ managing director, said: “Lots of people cancelled, which was a shame as the west and north were not affected, although one client chartered a helicopter to fly over the volcano.”

Meanwhile, tourism seems to have gotten back to normal in Iceland where it was down after the event. “As the old maxim says, ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’, wrote TTG Live, saying there’s been no lava or ash emission since May and that tourism there at least has returned to normalcy.
 

“Tour operators tell us that autumn and winter are looking good,” said Sigga Groa Thorarinsdottir, Visit Iceland’s UK and Ireland marketing manager
 

By David Wilkening