Shortly after the volcano’s active eruption phase began in mid-April, the Met Office contacted Joseph Ulanowski from the Science and Technology Research Institute at the University of Hertfordshire, who last year, together with (right) Giles Harrison from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, had developed a specialist weather balloon which could assess the location and composition of the volcanic ash clouds.

Giles Harrison, atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading (an expert with balloons having even helped NASA,) devised an inexpensive way to measure the effects of turbulence using weather balloons. The instrument package contains a magnetic field sensor which measures fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field due to turbulence.

As Earth's magnetic field is very stable, the measurements of magnetic changes taken with the weather balloon showed effects of turbulence on the sensor, since the balloon itself was moving very violently.

Their balloons, originally designed and used to study the properties of desert dust clouds, are able to assess not only the size of atmospheric particles but also the electric charge present. Last year measurements madee with the balloons in Kuwait and off the west coast of Africa showed clearly that desert dust could becomes strongly electrified aloft. Charging modifies particle behaviour,  as to how effectively particles grow and are removed by rain.

A hastily scrambled team travelled to a site near Stranraer, where a balloon was launched, detecting a layer of volcanic ash 4km aloft, about 600m thick, with very abrupt upper and lower edges.

From the measurements, the researchers concluded that neither energy from the volcanic source - more than 1200kms away - nor weather conditions could have been responsible for the position of the charge found by the balloon.

Writing in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters, the researches note its presence, deep inside the plume, rather than on its upper and lower edges, contradicts expectations from models assuming solely weather-induced charging of layer clouds.

Dr Harrison says, “Detailed volcanic plume properties, such as the particle size, concentration and charge found by our weather balloon are important in predicting the impact on aircraft.”



Volcanic ash impact $5bn
Below Left: View of the ash plume from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull, taken by the nadir (vertical-viewing) camera on the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Right: a computer-analysed map of ash plume heights, corrected to compensate for the effects of wind. Reds are highest, blue lowest. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

The volcanic ash cloud cost the world's economy $5bn. But no one has stood up yet to disclose the 'offset' value to other transport, or how much Cloud Computing business spiked upwards when the only successful way to move data and do the work, was to use remote services or video conferencing rather than get on a plane.

Adrian Cooper, MD at analysts Oxford Economics, told delegates at the World Travel and Tourism Council in Beijing conference that the cost to the world’s business had been phenomenal and at times 80% of all flights were grounded, the worst shut down in European airspace since WWII.

The  first week “of volcanic crisis” turned out for the world economy a loss of $4.7bn dollars of global GDP. subsequent removal of some 5,000 flights in the period until 24 May added another 5% to this amount. Some $65m worth of perishable goods were lost in Africa alone and European flower markets could not transport produce.

During the first week “of volcanic crisis”, when the European airspace has been almost completely closed, the losses of the Americas amounted to $957m, in Asia – $517m, in Europe – $2,632bn, the Middle East, $591m the report says.

“The $5bn figure does includes offsets for those increases in alternative modes of transport that would have increased as planes were not allowed to leave the ground, such as train, ferry and automobile. It is likely that after longer more in-depth research the loss figure may well increase, ” Cooper added.

Equally there may be an IT productivity value spike being overlooked that might play a part in making users more appreciative of an online virtual world that can sometimes offers solutions for real-time problems!