Mount Raung — Southeast Asia’s Eyjafjallajökull
When Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) shut down Europe’s airspace for almost a week due to massive clouds of ash that were being spewed from the volcano mouth. Airlines and travelers were infuriated, arguing that a shutdown of an entire continent’s airspace was unnecessary because visibility had not been severely affected by the ash in the atmosphere. But the immediate danger was not poor visibility — volcanic ash in the atmosphere, even in concentrations not visible to pilots, can damage jet engines heavily. Volcanic ash, which is essentially shards of microscopic glass, can clog up components of jet engines, and even raise jet engine temperatures to over 1,000˚C, a temperature capable of melting rock down into magma.
This brings us to Mount Raung on the island of Java in Indonesia, a volcano that has become a source of travel pains across the region. The volcano erupted a few days ago after several weeks of tremors, belching out ash clouds that drifted as high as 6 kilometers into the atmosphere. This natural-color image of Mount Raung and its surrounding islands, captured on July 12th by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows dark ash plumes floating away from the mouth of the volcano. Authorities had shut down all airports within the region, and so far, only Bali’s main international airport has reopened to begin the unenviable responsibility of clearing over 900 flights worth of stranded passengers — a task that could take at least three days.
Mount Raung is one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes — there have been at least 13 eruptions in the last 25 years — but its latest eruption could not have come at a less opportune time. Many Indonesian Muslims are travelling home to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, and at over 200 million, Indonesia has the highest population of Muslims of any country in the world. Eid al-Fitr is one of Islam’s most important festivals that marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
-DC
Photo credit: http://1.usa.gov/1Gl08eO
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Video of Mount Raung doing its thing: http://bit.ly/1DfTqHd