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Volcano decreases carbon emissions

Friday, 23 April 2010

There is nothing worse than realising that all your travel plans will have to come to an immediate halt because air travel has been stopped. This is unfortunately a reality for many of those whose travel plans have been put on hold because of the recent Islandic volcanic eruption.

The Guardian reported just a few days ago that volcano Eyjafjallajӧkull (yes, that really complicated and unpronounceable name) was still pumping some serious ash into the sky, which is also resulting in the disruption of European air traffic. Apparently this disruption is expected to carry on into the next week.

There has been widespread fears that the volcano may not even stop, which creates a whole new problem altogether.

After doing some digging up into the history of the volcano, it seems that the last time it was active the eruptions continued from 1821 to 1823.

This year the volcano has already erupted twice; the first time being March 20 and the second being the more powerful April 14 eruption.

Amidst these reports of ash and erupting volcanoes, there were also reports concerning the impact all this has had on the London Book Fair, which kicked off earlier this week despite the speculation and the disruptions.

Some 33 of the 46 South African authors who had been scheduled to attend were notably absent from the fair.

Carbon emissions drop

What has been interesting, though, and somewhat indicative of what so many people have been trying to put across, is that because of the air ban carbon emissions have dropped.

But what about the emissions coming from the ash?

Well, what many of us expected was for this massive cloud of ash that’s exploding into the atmosphere to cause those global carbon emissions to shoot right up.

According to Geological analysts volcanoes do not emit that much carbon and the impact of this particular eruption will not be that great on a global scale.

It appears there was more reduction in CO2 from airplanes not flying all week than in the amount that came from the volcano.

This flight ban and shutting down of airspaces has reportedly resulted in a 2, 8 million tonne drop in carbon emissions; that’s more than the annual emissions of many developing countries.

Due to frequent flying, on a normal day, the 28 000 flights in European airspace emit about 560 000 tonnes of CO2, or a third of the world’s aviation emissions.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that emissions have dropped because of the closed airspaces.

Be as it may, volcanic eruptions are never something to jump for joy about.

At this point the best we can do is hope that there won’t be more eruptions from Eyjafjallajӧkull, especially is it’s last activity is anything to go by.

Volcanologist forecasts ‘limited’ environmental impact for Europe

Ash cloud chaos: Recriminations over Europe flight ban