The effects of volcanic dust on Britain’s climate could be severe

[FarCenter]

It is not often that the UK is the victim of a volcanic eruption but the weather is helping to smother volcanic dust over the entire country.

When Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southern Iceland erupted on Tuesday it shot a cloud of steam, smoke and ash up to 11km (7 miles) high. At the same time, high-level winds have been sweeping that ash down across the UK, and also much of Scandinavia.

The eruption began on March 20 but only spewed out fire and lava, which was fairly well contained. That eruption slowly subsided and the volcano seemed to quieten down.

Two days ago, however, the volcano blew up in a far more powerful eruption that produced towering clouds of ash and melted ice in the surrounding glaciers, setting off floods and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of local residents.

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There are concerns that the plume of dust from the volcano could carry on for some time. The last time that Eyjafjallajokull erupted in 1821 it is thought to have continued for two years.

An even bigger worry is that on each of the three occasions in Iceland’s history that the volcano has erupted, dating back to 920AD, it has led to an even more violent volcano, Katia, erupting soon afterwards.

The records show that Katia can shoot up enormous plumes of ash, gas and acid high into the atmosphere, blocking out the Sun’s energy and cooling the climate.

The effects on the UK could be severe. In June 1783 another nearby volcano called Laki erupted for several months, emitting clouds of poisonous gas that killed about 9,000 people in Iceland. The same eruption also created a cold fog that fanned out across much of Europe and North America, in some places causing the coldest summer for 500 years.

“The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena,” wrote the naturalist Gilbert White, in Hampshire. “The country people look with a kind of superstitious awe at the red louring aspect of the sun thro’ the fog.” The climate across the northern hemisphere was sent into upheaval, even weakening the monsoon rains in Africa and India, leading to chronic famine in Egypt and India.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article7098303.ece

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