SIMULATION OF THE ICELAND VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF APRIL 2010 USING THE ENSEMBLE SYSTEM

• Main Author: Buckley, R.
• Other Authors: United States. Department of Energy.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Savannah River Site (S.C.) 2011
• Subjects: Volcanoes; Forecasting; 99 General And Miscellaneous//Mathematics; Computing; And Information Science; Computerized Simulation; Source Terms; Eruption; Websites; Deposition; Accidents; Transport; Clouds; Eyjafjallajokull; Lone; Iceland
• Online Access: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc836988/

The Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption in Iceland in April 2010 disrupted transportation in Europe which ultimately affected travel plans for many on a global basis. The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) is responsible for providing guidance to the aviation industry of the transport of volcanic ash clouds. There are nine such centers located globally, and the London branch (headed by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office, or UKMet) was responsible for modeling the Iceland volcano. The guidance provided by the VAAC created some controversy due to the burdensome travel restrictions and uncertainty involved in the prediction of ash transport. The Iceland volcanic eruption provides a useful exercise of the European ENSEMBLE program, coordinated by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy. ENSEMBLE, a decision support system for emergency response, uses transport model results from a variety of countries in an effort to better understand the uncertainty involved with a given accident scenario. Model results in the form of airborne concentration and surface deposition are required from each member of the ensemble in a prescribed format that may then be uploaded to a website for manipulation. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is the lone regular United States participant throughout the 10-year existence of ENSEMBLE. For the Iceland volcano, four separate source term estimates have been provided to ENSEMBLE participants. This paper focuses only on one of those source terms. The SRNL results in relation to other modeling agency results along with useful information obtained using an ensemble of transport results will be discussed.