Manufacturology

We said “Send cash”, not ash…; How will extended flight stop influence society?

Satel­lite image shows ash cloud from Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull vol­cano stretch­ing towards cen­tral Europe. Image by NASA God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter (Flickr) on April 15 2010.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to think of the con­se­quences if the ash cloud from the erup­tion of Ice­landic vol­cano Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull con­tin­ues to shadow Europe for a longer period of time. The above pic­ture shows how the ash cloud, clearly vis­i­ble, stretches from Ice­land across the Atlantic beyond the Faroe islands and Shet­land islands towards cen­tral Europe.

Cur­rently, media and author­i­ties talk about the flight stop con­tin­u­ing for tomor­row Fri­day (SvD, DN). But the erup­tion could last for a long time, and if it does, it will be hard to esti­mate the con­se­quences. How depen­dent is mod­ern soci­ety on flight? I don’t know, but I sus­pect that the eco­nomic costs of an extended stop would be enor­mous. Can it lead to short­age of the exotic foods that we’ve learned to take for granted? A short­age of lemon grass at the super­mar­ket within a few days is no dis­as­ter, but how much more of what we eat on a daily basis is deliv­ered by flight, really? Fresh fruit I sus­pect. What more?

I’m read­ing that Swedish for­eign min­is­ter Carl Bildt sus­pects that the Ice­landic are bring­ing in the old Norse gods to help sort­ing out the finan­cial crisis…

As trav­ellers to and from Europe are stuck at air­ports around the world, I can see that the ash cloud is right above me just now. It cur­rently cov­ers most of the Scan­di­na­vian penin­sula and parts of cen­tral Europe. Com­pare the satel­lite image above with the dis­per­sion map below.

Thurs­day 15 April 2010 at 23h00 GMT+1: Vol­canic ash cloud over Scan­di­na­vian penin­sula and cen­tral Europe. Image by Mete­o­rol­o­gisk insti­tutt, met.no.

From what I’ve read this is a small erup­tion, but the con­se­quences are more widely felt than usual because of the ash cloud. The vol­cano is located under the glac­ier, which is seen in the photo below taken in 2008. Parts of this glac­ier is now melt­ing, caus­ing flood­ing in the val­ley below.

An Ice­landic farm and Eyjaf­jal­la­jökull. Photo: Steve Hicks (Flickr).

Update April 16: See this post for a map of the pre­dicted dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ash cloud by the end of the com­ing weekend.

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