Volcanic ash cloud won’t sully Canadian skies, meteorologist says

A satellite image from NASA shows ash from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull as a dark grey smear through the centre of the image. That ash cloud grounded thousands of flights to and from Europe, but won’t be headed to Canada, says a Canadian meteorologist. (IMAGE COURTESY OF NASA)

The massive plume of ash from an Icelandic volcano that grounded thousands of European flights and stranded millions of passengers will have little impact on Canadian airspace or the Earth’s climate.

Rene Servranckx, a meteorologist and expert on volcanic ash clouds with the Meteorological Service of Canada, told Nunatsiaq News April 21 there should be no interruption of domestic flights in Canada because of the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull.

“Typically, an eruption in Iceland wouldn’t be a concern for us, because the ash would be moving generally towards the east,” he said. “But it so happens that currently the weather system over the Atlantic is sort of abnormal and we’ve got a reverse flow from east to west.”

“[But] there’s no ash cloud in the air stream that’s moving towards Canada,” Servranckx said. “The threat is over.”

He added that Eyjafjallajokull could erupt again, but it’s unlikely a similar weather pattern would emerge to push the ash over Canada.

“But that’s why we monitor it 24/7,” Servranckx said.

Environment Canada had issued meteorological warnings for aircraft because of the ash cloud, but cancelled them for Canadian airspace April 20.

But that doesn’t mean the massive plume of volcanic ash hasn’t caused headaches for Canadians travelling abroad. Stephanie McDonald of Iqaluit has been stuck in the west African nation of Ghana for days because the ash grounded flights in and out of Frankfurt, Germany for days.

She was supposed to be back in Iqaluit April 19, but now likely won’t get home before April 30.

“I had wrongly assumed that those of us with cancelled tickets would jump to the front of the queue. I called again (Wednesday) morning and was told that if a free seat came up before (April 28) that they would call me,” McDonald said.

But if her airline can’t confirm an onward flight to Ottawa from Frankfurt, McDonald won’t be allowed to board her flight in Accra.

“They don’t want extra bodies hanging out in the Frankfurt airport,” she said.

The World Meteorological Organization said most of the ash is in a layer up to 3,000 meters above the Earth’s surface, with finer particles rising as high as 6,000 metres. The ash itself is mostly made up of rocks, minerals and volcanic glass up to 2 millimetres in size.

The particles can get sucked into jet engines, melting at the high temperatures and wrecking turbine blades. The ash can also damage the fuselage and scour windscreens so badly pilots can’t see out properly, said a WMO report.

Meanwhile, Air Greenland is still plagued by flight cancellations, reports Nuuk’s Sermitsiaq newspaper.

Air traffic was grounded over the southern two-thirds of Greenland as of April 22. There was also 3,500 kilograms of mail bound for Greenland still stuck in Denmark, the newspaper said.

Servranckx said that despite the travel headaches, Eyjafjallajokull is actually a relatively small eruption. And while ash can act as a warming agent on Arctic ice by absorbing sunlight, he said it’s unlikely this eruption will have any effect either way on the Earth’s climate or Arctic ice caps.

Eyjafjallajokull is dwarfed by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines, which caused a global drop in temperatures of about 0.5 C, Servranckx said.

With a report from Allison Cross, Canwest News Service