Iceland volcanic Essay Example for Free

Iceland volcanic Essay Natural disasters and their atrocities are but bitter facts of life: we keep hearing about natural disasters taking place all around our world. For example, two year ago in China, a deadly earthquake of magnitude 7. 9 left more than 80,000 people killed which included 18,000 persons officially missing. During this earthquake, many Chinese lost their families and homes. Moreover, in January 2010, Haiti had a 7. 0 Mw earthquake; between 217,000 and 230,000 people were identified dead and 1,000,000 people became homeless. The incidents of earthquakes like these have the tendency to frighten the world: however, the aggregate impact of these on the world is not as intense as in case of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull. The earthquake in Eyjafjallajokull resulted in the cancellation of more than 100,000 flights stranding hundreds of thousands of travelers in airport around the world. To worsen this, it happened to shut down a third of industry such as farmer, airline or other industries relying on the air transportation. According to TIME, it was the most severe global travel disruption since World War II. Although we have state-of-the-art technology to predict the incident of earthquakes and thus protect human life before the tragedy happens, we have to understand very well that the mother earth keeps surprising us: one of such reminders comes from the Iceland. Iceland is located on the both Iceland hotspot and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with highly geological active volcanoes. It has 130 volcanoes out of which 18 have erupted. In June 1783, Laki volcano erupted with devastating effects not only on Iceland but the entire world. To start with, it caused such a famine that became the reason of the death of nearly one fourth of the Iceland people. Furthermore, the ash and dust clouds kept covered most of the Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for several months. In addition to these, it also impacted the global climate, for instance, after the Laki eruption, North America had the longest and coldest winter. Eyjafjallajokull, meaning ‘island mountain glacier’ in Icelandic, is a smaller ice cup in Iceland. The volcanic events are considered to be a single eruption with different phases. In fact, it began to erupt since the Ice Age; whereas, according to available record, the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajokull occurred in 920, 1612 and from 1821 to 1823. The first-time eruption, anyhow, started on March 20, the volcano began to eject olivine basaltic andesite lava which led to a volcanic eruption of Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) 1. After almost a month, the earth didn’t get quite yet, instead the eruption became stronger and throwing a vast plume of glass- rich ash to over 7 miles into the atmosphere which rises to VEI 4. The ice and air are the main reasons for such devastating eruption. The weight of the glacier atop the volcano helps the magma inside build to a higher pressure. So when the mountain had eruption, the high pressure can send the volcanic gases and ash miles into the sky. However fortunately for the USA, the ash cloud is travelling east- southeast toward Europe even Asia. Since the eruption is very strong, the ash clouds have already reached North America, as the western part of Canada’s Labrador Peninsula, the Newfoundland Island and small islands. Besides, the volcanic melted a part of a glacier causing heavy and large flooding and, resultantly, 600 people living around the area had to move to a save place. Today, there is no such evidence to show the volcano has calmed down. Scientist said that, under the limited technology of volcanic, it is difficult to predict the development of the volcanic. According to the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, the Icelandic volcano eruption would last for two year and then the ash will stop until the glacier melted. As a matter of fact, no one can tell how long the eruption had lasted for as by May 14, the volcano eruption was still increasing. The scientists are concerned about the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull that it may lead to Katla erupted too as tested through events in the past. â€Å"There have been three Eyjafjallajokull eruptions and Katla has followed each time† said geophysicist Sigrun Hriensdottir, at the Earth Science Institute. Sigrun Hriensdottir believes that the volcanoes are directly linked underground in a way that the magma from one can flow into the other. Therefore, the eruption of Katla may cause heavier and larger flooding that can influence more Icelanders. The Icelanders are themselves worried owing to the fact that the Eyjafjallajokull eruption is a small rehearsal before the eruption of Katla and they fear that the eruption of Katla may take place anytime: on two months later or tomorrow. The airline industry, already pummeled by the recession, has lost nearly $2 billion. Almost 100,000 fearful customers marooned overseas and the industry lost $9 million a day that stranded vacationers would spend on their extra accommodation, catering etc. Thus in this very connection, Thomas Grindle, chief of aircraft maintenance at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif warns that the ash can definitely do some real damage to airplane’s engines; it can get sucked into the hot combustion chamber without being noticed by the pilots. Although the pilots can fly around or under the ash cloud, the problem is that it’s difficult to measure the amount of ash in the air and to worsen this we don’t have the complete measurement of the ash for flying. A deeper lesson, human learns from such disasters that we can’t fight nature. The only thing we can do is to wait for the earth to become quiet again. We also realize how limited knowledge we have about the volcano: we, resultantly, can’t do anything with the volcano and we cannot predict when it will stop or what will happen next. However, there are three things we can do: get prepared to deal with it, do more research, and above all, pray fro the best.