Tephra sedimentation during the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption (Iceland) from deposit, radar, and satellite observations

Abstract

The April–May 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano (Iceland) was characterized by a nearly continuous injection of tephra into the atmosphere that affected various economic sectors in Iceland and caused a global interruption of air traffic. Eruptive activity during 4–8 May 2010 was characterized based on short-duration physical parameters in order to capture transient eruptive behavior of a long-lasting eruption (i.e., total grain-size distribution, erupted mass, and mass eruption rate averaged over 30 min activity). The resulting 30 min total grain-size distribution based on both ground and Meteosat Second Generation-Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (MSG-SEVIRI) satellite measurements is characterized by Mdphi of about 2 and a fine-ash content of about 30 wt %. The accumulation rate varied by 2 orders of magnitude with an exponential decay away from the vent, whereas Mdphi shows a linear increase until about 18 km from the vent, reaching a plateau of about 4.5 between 20 and 56 km. The associated mass eruption rate is between 0.6 and 1.2 × 105 kg s−1. In situ sampling showed how fine ash mainly fell as aggregates of various typologies. About 5 to 9 wt % of the erupted mass remained in the cloud up to 1000 km from the vent, suggesting that nearly half of the ash >7 settled as aggregates within the first 60 km. Particle sphericity and shape factor varied between 0.4 and 1 with no clear correlation to the size and distance from vent. Our experiments also demonstrate how satellite retrievals and Doppler radar grain-size detection can provide a real-time description of the source term but for a limited particle-size range.