27 August 2010
Volcano-Monitoring Program Safeguards North Pacific Aviation
Russian and U.S. scientists track volcanic activity in Kamchatka, Kuriles
Washington — The safety of commercial aircraft flying across the heavily trafficked North Pacific route linking Asia and the Russian Far East with North America has benefitted from more than 15 years of collaboration between American and Russian scientists to monitor volcanic activity on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and elsewhere.
A total of 29 active volcanoes are scattered across Kamchatka, with several eruptions per year that spew volcanic clouds of rock and ash high into the atmosphere. Volcanic ash is extremely hazardous to jet aircraft because it not only can abrade cockpit windows and erode engine compressor blades but also melt and resolidify within the engines. Increasing the danger is the fact that volcanic clouds can remain aloft for days and drift thousands of kilometers from the eruption site.
The threat that active volcanoes pose to commercial air traffic was dramatically illustrated earlier in 2010 during the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokul volcano in Iceland. The eastward drift of the volcanic ash plume toward continental Europe forced most northern European nations to close their airspace, leading to thousands of cancelled flights and stranding an estimated 10 million travelers worldwide.
The Kamchatka volcanoes, together with those on the Kurile Islands of Russia, the Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska, all belong to the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the geologically active belt that stretches in a horseshoe-shaped band 40,000 kilometers along the Pacific Ocean from southern Chile up through Alaska and then down again to New Zealand. Volcanic eruptions in Kamchatka, the Kurile Islands or Alaska could affect air space in Russia, Japan, Canada and the United States.
“Kamchatkan volcanoes are very active,” Tina Neal, an Alaskan-based volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), told America.gov. “It has been the norm for years now to have three and sometimes four volcanoes on Kamchatka actively erupting and of concern to aviation on a daily basis.”
Between 2005 and 2007, Russian volcanoes generated two to three ash clouds per month that reached 6,000 meters or higher. Most were produced by Kamchatka’s Klyuchevskoy volcano, whose elevation of 4,750 meters — the highest of any active volcano in Asia or Europe — means its ash eruptions can rapidly reach altitudes imperiling commercial air traffic.
In response to the need to rapidly detect volcanic threats, scientists in Russia and the United States formed the Kamchatkan Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) in 1993. The lead institutions now operating KVERT are the Russian Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the Kamchatka Branch of Geophysical Surveys, and the Alaska Volcano Observatory, a joint project of the USGS, the University of Alaska and the state of Alaska that monitors the more than 50 historically active volcanoes in Alaska.
“Russian volcanologists and seismologists had been tracking and studying their volcanoes for decades, and doing excellent science,” Neal said. “What KVERT added was a component of widespread public warnings to aviation in English, and this was a big step.”
KVERT volcanologists use a variety of scientific tools to detect and measure volcanic activity. Thirty seismometers that monitor 10 of the Kamchatka volcanoes form the key element of KVERT. They are backed up by pilot and field-based reports, satellite measurements and real-time video feeds from Web cameras covering the Klyuchevskoy, Bezymianny and Sheveluch volcanoes that rank among the most active ones on Kamchatka.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory shares twice-daily feeds of satellite analysis of the Kamchatka volcanoes with its Russian counterparts. In the event of a significant eruption, it notifies volcanic ash monitoring centers in Anchorage, Alaska; Washington; and Montreal, Canada. The observatory also works with its Russian partners to provide post-eruption feedback from aviation and meteorological organizations, and to organize occasional exchanges of personnel for training and planning.
“It has been a rich experience for many American scientists to get to know their Russian counterparts and learn from them about the incredible diversity of volcanism in Russia,” Neal said, adding that such interaction has helped them develop strong professional and personal relationships.
The value of KVERT was proved within the first two years of its creation, when major eruptions occurred at Klyuchevskoy in 1994 and Bezymianny in 1995. In each case, the eruptions spewed ash clouds that reached an altitude of 10 kilometers or higher and stretched more than 1,000 kilometers across North Pacific air routes.
More recently, in May and June of 2007, Klyuchevskoy was highly active, emitting volcanic ash clouds in all directions that again reached as high as 10 kilometers. Warning notices from KVERT describing ongoing volcanic activity and hazards allowed thousands of commercial aircraft transiting the North Pacific to avoid the ash cloud.
A similar monitoring organization called SVERT was created in 2003 to detect and track, primarily through satellite imagery, activity at the 36 volcanoes that dot the Kurile Islands lying south of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Neal spoke of the benefits for commercial aviation from the “demonstration of international cooperation” exemplified by such programs.
“As the Iceland eruption showed, even a moderate eruption can prove very costly as well as dangerous,” she said. “The volcanology, seismology and remote sensing experts of KVERT and SVERT are a vital part of the global network of scientists working to make the skies safe.”
More information is available on the Alaska Volcano Observatory and KVERT websites.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
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