Skip to footer

Is this volcano in Iceland Europe's worst polluter?

Last year's volcanic eruption in Iceland released more than three times as much sulphur dioxide as all European industry combined.

|
Stefano Di Nicolo/AP
In this aerial view, fountains of lava, up to 60 meters high, spurt from a fissure in the ground on the north side of the Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland, Sept., 2, 2014. Bardarbunga produces three times more sulphur dioxide emissions than all European industry, researchers at the University of Edinburgh said Wednesday.

Who knew nature could be so dirty?

New research shows last year’s volcanic eruption in Iceland released an unfathomable amount of toxic gas – more than three times as much as all European industry combined.

Using data from satellite sensors to track pollution from the eruption, a team of European scientists found that up to 132,000 tons per day of sulphur dioxide was emitted during the eruption at Bardarbunga volcano. Burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes produce sulphur dioxide as well, which has been linked to respiratory problems and acid rain.

“These results help scientists predict where pollution from future eruptions will spread,” said John Stevenson of the School of GeoSciences at Britain's University of Edinburgh, in a university release.

The eruption lasted half a year and caused a river of lava to flow across northern Iceland. It was the country’s biggest eruption in more than 200 years.

But it lacked ash, so it didn’t interrupt flight paths like the dreaded Eyjafjallajökull volcano did in 2010, causing nearly 100,000 flight cancellations and costing the industry almost $2 billion. But because this eruption produced so much lava, which gives off toxic fumes, air quality was the main victim.

“The eruption discharged lava at a rate of more than 200 cubic [meters] per second, which is equivalent to filling five Olympic-sized swimming pools in a minute. Six months later, when the eruption ended, it had produced enough lava to cover an area the size of Manhattan,” Anja Schmidt of the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds said in the release. “In the beginning, the eruption emitted about eight times more sulphur dioxide per day than is emitted from all man-made sources in Europe per day.”

Researches hope this study will help them understand how eruptions can impact Britain's air quality.

The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research and supported by The Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Is this volcano in Iceland Europe's worst polluter?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/0925/Is-this-volcano-in-Iceland-Europe-s-worst-polluter
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe