All indications showed a new eruption was starting in Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland, according to reports reaching here from Reykjavik on Wednesday.

“Rivers are growing bigger and smoke was seen over the glacier this morning,” geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson was quoted as saying by the Icelandic newspaper online The Iceland Review.

“Indications are that an eruption has already started under the glacier. Rivers close to the glacier are growing. Markarfljot, the biggest river close to the glacier is growing at a fast rate. At this moment it is difficult to estimate the size of the eruption,” Gudmundsson added.

“Most likely the top crater at Eyjafjallajokull glacier had started to erupt. That volcano has been dormant since the 1821-1823 eruption,” volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson told the Icelandic national broadcaster RUV.

Earthquake activity started late Tuesday night in the area. About 800 people in the area were evacuated Wednesday morning, but some were allowed to go to their farms to attend to animals later. However, they were asked to return to safer places at 8:00 a.m.

Roads to the area have been closed both from the east and the west, according to the staff of Iceland’s civil protection.

Two airplanes flying over Eyjafjallajokull Wednesday morning indicated that smoke is coming up in a new place to the south west of the eruption in Fimmvorduhsals. This might be the beginning of a new eruption, much more dangerous than the previous eruption, said Iceland

TODAY 15.04.2010.

Ash spewing from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland has disrupted flights across Britain and forced airports to shut.

Airline passengers are facing massive disruption after Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow airports were shut. Five easyJet flights due to depart from Stansted Airport were also cancelled as a result of the huge plume of ash. Airports have urged travelers to contact their airlines to check whether flights were affected.

Weather forecasters had warned on Wednesday that the ash plume could drift over British airspace during the night, causing significant disruption to services.

The movement of the plume, which had been drifting eastwards, was being monitored by both the Met Office and NATS, the air traffic control service. Air traffic in Norway has also been halted due to poor visibility.

Volcanic ash, which consists of the pulverized rock and glass created by the eruptions, can jam aircraft machinery if a plane flies through the plume, shutting down the engines. Ash can also be can be sucked into the cabin itself, contaminating the passengers’ environment as well as damaging the plane’s electronic systems.

Forecasters say the cloud could take a number of days to disperse. Matt Dobson, a forecaster for MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said there could be a threat in areas from Scotland to Denmark and Norway until Friday.

Aircraft have been affected by volcanic ash in the past. In June 1982 a British Airways Boeing 747 ran into difficulties after the eruption of a volcano at Galunggung, Indonesia. Ash jammed all four engines briefly, and the aircraft plummeted 24,000 feet before they could be restarted.

Because of the threat to aviation, a global early warning system, known as the International Airways Volcano Watch, has been established. Iceland is considered as particularly vulnerable to volcanic disruption.

TODAY 16.04.2010

This pitfall in Latvia.

Attention!

The volcanic eruption in Iceland has created a cloud of ash, which has greatly affected the air travel throughout Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. As a result of the restrictions on air traffic, a number of international flights from RIGA International airport has been cancelled. Please follow the updates and current information on scheduled flights on the RIGA International airport website www.riga-airport.com or call the airport information service at 1187, or contact your airline.

Look to Latvian sky…

TODAY 05.05.2010

Iceland’s clouds of volcanic ash are menacing European air traffic again, but transport chiefs insisted Tuesday they are learning from last month’s crisis and won’t let the hard-to-measure emissions ground their continent again.

Rising volcanic activity spurred aviation authorities in Ireland, northwest Scotland and the Faeroe Islands to shut down services Tuesday after a two-week hiatus. Their airports reopened several hours later, once the densest ash clouds had passed over their airports and back over the Atlantic.

But soon a new wave of engine-damaging ash was approaching British airspace, forcing Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority to announce that airports in Scotland and Northern Ireland had to cancel all services indefinitely, beginning at 7 a.m. (0600GMT) Wednesday.

The British authority said its forecasters had determined that ash in United Kingdom airspace “has increased in density.” It said the prevailing winds would probably continue to push the threat southward, “potentially affecting airports in the northwest of England and North Wales tomorrow” — but missing the key European air hubs in London.

Earlier, travelers and transport chiefs alike said Europe was learning to pinpoint the true nature of the threat versus last month’s better-safe-than-sorry shutdown of air services for nearly a week in several countries. Airline and airport authorities branded that response overkill; it grounded 100,000 flights and 10 million passengers and cost the industry billions.

European Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas emphasized that, had last month’s sweeping safeguards been imposed Tuesday, “a very large part” of Europe would have lost its air links again — and for days, not hours.

Kallas and transport ministers from across the 27-nation European Union agreed Tuesday at an emergency meeting in Brussels to press ahead on plans to unify their divided air-traffic-control networks, research new ways to identify and measure radar-invisible ash clouds, and legally define safety standards for specific makes of jet engines and the airline industry as a whole.

“We want to give top priority to those measures which will accelerate the setting up of the single European sky,” Kallas said.

But government and aviation officials from Ireland couldn’t attend in person because their airports were shut. They warned that Iceland, some 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) to the northwest, could keep spewing untold tons of engine-destroying ash into air space indefinitely and could keep disrupting in Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia this summer.

“There’s no doubt about it, we’re probably facing a summer of uncertainty due to this ash cloud,” said Eamonn Brennan, chief executive of the Irish Aviation Authority, who foresaw the potential for sporadic shutdowns dependent on the whims of prevailing winds.

Too often so far, the ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokul volcano has ended up traveling with unseasonal winds straight east or southeast into Europe rather than northeast to the uninhabited Arctic, the typical path in springtime.

Irish Transport Minister Noel Dempsey said Tuesday’s closure of Irish airspace “emphasizes the need for a strong European response and action plan to deal with this situation as it continues to evolve.”

Iceland’s Institute of Earth Sciences said Eyjafjallajokul — which erupted April 13 after a 177-year slumber — has experienced increased seismic activity since Sunday and its ash plume has risen to nearly 5.5 kilometers (18,000 feet) in altitude. The last time it erupted, in 1821, its emissions ebbed and flowed for two years.

At Dublin Airport, passengers said they doubted whether aviation chieftains could effectively cork the Iceland ash threat soon. Some turned their anger on Irish airlines for allegedly taking advantage of their misfortunes to gouge them on emergency-rebooked flights.

“We only got married on Saturday and a wedding is a lot of stress, so this was the last thing we needed,” said Maria Colgan, standing beside her husband Brian Halligan after they sped to Dublin Airport and paid euro600 ($790) to catch the last Aer Lingus flight Monday out of Dublin to London.

The couple, both 30, felt they had no choice but to shell out because their honeymoon in Barbados required them to make a Tuesday connection in London.

“The ash isn’t our fault. Aer Lingus could work with people like us, but they aren’t interested, charging us full whack for flights to London,” she said.

But most passengers camped out Tuesday during the shutdown appeared resigned to a dawning reality of uncertain air bookings. Many applauded the authorities’ more selective shutdown Tuesday as a sign of improving systems — and literally applauded as the Dublin departures terminals began listing takeoff times again.

“Ireland’s an island. We’re kind of stuck with air travel, for better or worse,” said Elaine McDermott, 23, who lost her early flight to Paris — to attend a college friend’s wedding — but found herself boarding a replacement service eight hours later.

“I’ll make it to the church on time,” she said with a relieved smile once her backpack had been checked.

Weather forecasters and geologists agreed that the prognosis for Europe’s harried air travelers should improve starting Thursday.

Irish meteorologist Evelyn Cusack said winds were expected to resume their typical northeasterly direction, pushing ash into the Arctic and away from Europe’s airports.

And Brian Flynn, deputy director of operations at the Brussels air safety agency Eurocontrol, said the ash was not reaching altitudes that could threaten aircraft in mid-flight, only those that were climbing after takeoff or descending to land. This greatly limits the actual air corridors at risk, he said.

“This time the volcano is much less active” than during the April 14-20 shutdowns, Flynn said.

The Irish Aviation Authority said the risk of further shutdowns in the Republic of Ireland before midday Wednesday was “minimal.”

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