[ProtectOurFreedom]

Being over water won’t make any difference. The ash is going to circle the globe, first in the northern hemisphere and then spreading south. It takes a long time for rainfall to wash the ash out of the atmosphere. The question is when will it be diluted enough to not pose a threat to aircraft engines.

A huge eruption of Mt. Tamora (in modern day Indonesia) in April 1815 led to wide spread crop failure and famine a year later.

[nmh]

Whoa! A year later there was a famine?

What else can go wrong for the U.S.?

Never mind. Don’t tell me ... .

[JSteff]

“A huge eruption of Mt. Tamora (in modern day Indonesia) in April 1815 led to wide spread crop failure and famine a year later.”

This is not to that level yet. Maybe this will make people think about the possibilities of the Yellowstone Caldera lighting off.

That would be even much worse and along the lines of Mt. Tamora.

[RayChuang88]

Tambora's eruption spewed out about 15 cubic miles of volcano ash into the atmosphere. The current eruption--if it's confined to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano--would be lucky to generate about half the ashfall of the Mt. Saint Helens eruption of 1980, or about 0.125 cubic miles of ash.

The fear right now is that the current eruption could trigger off an eruption of the nearby Katla volcano--and a major eruption of Katla could spew about 0.5 cubic miles of ash into the atmosphere, which could cause a cold summers for at least a year.