Volcanic eruptions: Guided by the lightning

A new way of protecting planes from the ash from volcanoes

THE explosive eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, an Icelandic volcano, wreaked havoc on air travel over the North Atlantic for several weeks this spring. The very existence of the ash cloud thrown into the sky was bad enough. But an inability to predict the cloud’s behaviour made matters worse. In particular, sudden changes in its height made the job of flying safely above it a tricky one.

Now a team of researchers at the British and Icelandic Meteorological Offices, led by Alec Bennett, may have found a way round the problem of predicting the height of volcanic ash clouds like that created by Eyjafjallajokull. As they report in Environmental Research Letters, the lightning the ash generates tells all. …