Erupting Bardarbunga Volcano in Iceland Sparks Red Alert

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After thousands of small earthquakes rattled Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano last week, early this Saturday morning Aug. 23 the Icelandic Meteorological Office issued a red alert closing all airspace above the volcano, due to a significant likelihood that ash emissions would cause dangerous conditions for airlines.

The news this morning came after reports from the Icelandic Meteorological Office indicated that a small eruption beneath the Vatnajokull glacier, Europe's largest glacier, began within the Bardarbunga volcano. Although Icelandic authorities created a no-fly zone of 140 nautical miles by 100 nautical miles surrounding the volcano as a precaution, the air space over most of the nation has been left open.

"All airports are open and all flights are on schedule" spokeswoman Olof Baldursdottir said in a press release.

However, in spite of air space remaining open over the island-nation, airlines have been advised that if magma breaks through the ice cap and ash is poured into the airspace, that flights will undoubtedly be grounded until ash density is declared safe for flight.

Meteorological Office volcanologist Melissa Pfeffer reports that seismic data indicates that magma beneath the Dyngjujokull icecap is melting, however, it remains unclear whether or not the eruption will melt through the 100 to 400 meter thick ice. Pfeffer reports that the amount of ash produced will depend directly on the thickness of the ice that the eruption would break through in the glacier.

"The thicker the ice, the more water there is, the more explosive it will be and the more ash-rich the eruption will be" Pfeffer says.

As a remote area, Iceland's Bardabunga volcano is entirely uninhabited, though it only lies 200 miles east of the nation's capital Reykjavik. Following the events of the May 2010 Eyjafjallajokul volcano eruption, which launched a column of ash into the sky grounding 107,000 flights over an eight-day period, Iceland has implemented several contingency and monitoring plans, which are currently in effect to assure than no casualties occur as a result of the possible volcanic eruption.

"The aviation industry is much better prepared than it was in 2010, but my suspicion is that if we have a similar density of ash cloud to 2010 with similar weather conditions, there [could] be a significant degree of disruption" independent aviation safety consultant, Jo Gillespie says. "There [could] be a delay between the eruption and the gathering of enough data to decide where it is safe to fly."

Though geophysicist Dr. Ian Stimpson from Keele University told BBC that the eruption is nowhere near the catastrophic level of the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull volcano at the moment, Pfeffer and the Icelandic Meteorological Office are keeping a close watch on seismic activity, as many factors could lead to an even worse eruption.