Photo of the week
St Andrews experts contribute to understanding of volcanic ash cloud.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in southern Iceland on Tuesday 13 April resulted in intense media interest, which saw members of the School of Geography and Geosciences contributing to the public understanding of the underlying eruption and atmospheric processes behind the volcanic ash cloud.
Researchers at St Andrews have been actively collaborating with scientists at the University of Iceland to understand the dispersal mechanisms of volcanic ash. The information which is now being gathered on the deposition of ash from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption will greatly improve the understanding of these events as time-markers in the recent geological past.
The photograph shows a view of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption from Mýrdalsjökull (close to Godabunga) on 17 April 2010. A new explosive eruption has just occurred and the black ash-filled cloud is seen rising in the lower parts of the volcanic plume. The higher parts of the plume are a mix of ash and steam with increasingly more steam at altitude. Ash fall is clearly seen as vertical black areas. The wind is blowing the plume to the south. At this point the plume was roughly 5 km high.
Photograph credit: The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. Charlotte Thorup Dyhr, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland.