For the Geeky Lot - Volcanic Ash Reading Material

As you can imagine the Professor is wont to follow the world through the eyes of an academic. While I have a day job this is way too good an opportunity to see what else is out there in terms of scientific knowledge.

So in the interests of those of you who are also a little geeky - here are two documents that you might want to read.

The first one is the formal ICAO document on the standards and expected impact of Volcanic Ash. The subject has been studied and is known to have harmful effects. So ICAO (the official UN body on aviation) has reports for each of its major areas. This is the formal contingency plan. So far the adherence to the plan seems to have been somewhat spotty at best - however this is SUPPOSED to be the rule book. Have a fun read here:

http://www.paris.icao.int/documents_open/show_file.php?id=274

The other document is associated with the formal review of an accidental fly through a cloud - as it turned out also over another of Iceland's Volcanoes. The case was ten years ago when a NASA plane inadvertently flew through a cloud that had shifted further than planned and right into the flight path of a NASA DC8-73. it took me a while to find this after I saw a reference to it - but this is the original document from NASA (there is another copy on the ALPA pilot's site also.)

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030068344_2003079762.pdf

This is a good document to describe the actual impact of what really happens.

Enjoy both of these...

Cheers