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VOLCANIC ASH AND AVIATION

This picture was taken during an eruption of Sakurajima volcano, Kagoshima (Japan). We were attending to the IAVCEI General Assembly, and international volcanology conference. 

 

This volcano is very active and erupted many times during our staying, this one being during the field trip and positively surprising all of us.

 

 

 

 

Volcanic eruption Sakurajima volcano

I had the privilege of visiting many volcanoes in the last years, including Etna and Stromboli (Italy), Teide (Spain), Galeras (Colombia), Concepción and Masaya (Nicaragua), Guagua Pichincha and Cotopaxi (Ecuaror).  This is a gallery of pictures taken at some of the volcanoes I visited.

 

 

 

 

 

I've always been fascinated with volcanic eruptions, but it's important to remind that these phenomena can produce strong socio-economic impacts to population and human activities. In particular, my research is focused on impacts of volcanic ash dispersal on civil aviation, made evident during the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull Volcano (Iceland), that produced more than 2 Billion losses and disrupted air traffic in Europe for more than 3 weeks.

 

 

My PhD research was developed within the environmental simulation group at the BSC, leaded by Arnau Folch (https://www.bsc.es/about-bsc/staff-directory/folch-arnau). At the BSC,  we simulate tephra dispersal from volcanic eruptions using the numerical model FALL3D (http://bsccase02.bsc.es/projects/fall3d/), developed by Antonio Costa, Arnau Folch and Gianni Macedonio (Costa et al., 2006; Folch et al., 2009).

 

 

Numerical simulation of tephra dispersal in atmosphere allows producing maps of expected ash presence in a given area. Results are produced in binary format and store many variables and their temporal series, but can be processed in order to obtain maps. This is an example of result of a simulation, post-processed using open source GIS programs (QGIS, http://www.qgis.org/en/site/, and GRASS, http://grass.osgeo.org/).

In particular, probabilistic ash dispersal hazard maps quantify the probability of having volcanic ash in a given area. The production of these maps has a high computational cost associated to the numerical modelling. In addition, the definition of input parameters requires a strong multidisciplinary effort, and has a high associated uncertainty. 

 

 

This is an example of hazard maps produced for a Plinian eruptive scenario at Popocatepétl volcano (Mexico). Results of the hazard assessment are published (Bonasia et al., 2013) and show that volcanic ash may affect important national and international airports and disrupt air traffic in the whole Mexican Gulf.

 

 

 

Probabilistic tephra dispersal hazard maps have been produced for several active volcanic areas and published in International Journals (see publications page for details):

 

Concepcion Volcano (Nicaragua) (Scaini et al., 2012)

Vesuvius Volcano (Italy) (Sulpizio et al., 2012)

Popocatepétl Volcano (Mexico) (Bonasia et al., 2013)

Askja, Katla and Hekla Volcanoes (Iceland) (Scaini et al., 2014a)

 

 

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