Aviation colour code goes red over the Bárðarbunga eruption site

On 29 August 2014 ENHANCE noted a short item from Iceland. Overnight, a fissure about 1 km long had opened in a lava field north of the Vatnajökull glacier, between the Dyngjujökull glacier and the Askja caldera, close to the Bárðarbunga volcano. The Icelandic Met Office raised the aviation colour code for the area to red.

Icelandic air traffic control closed the airspace above the eruption site up to 5,000 ft. No volcanic ash had been detected at that point, and a coast guard aircraft was due to survey the area. The item pointed readers to a BBC report for the wider account.

The reason for flagging it was the project’s own work on aviation. In 2010 the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajökull had disrupted flights across Europe, and ENHANCE ran a case study on how the air industry responds to volcanic eruptions. That study, its partners and its findings are set out in the Eyjafjallajökull case study.

What the item recorded was a contained response: a red code, a closed zone above the fissure up to 5,000 ft, and a survey flight to look for ash before any wider decision. The item gave no forecast of how long the restrictions would last, and it left the question of ash open until the survey flight reported back. Other ENHANCE cases are listed in the case-study atlas.