[Google Earth] Satellite images of Icelandic volcanic ash cloud

Today, the sky above my home in England, is rather empty. The air traffic authorities of the United Kingdom and those of many other countries across Europe have closed their airspace because of fears for the safety of flights due to a huge cloud of ash from the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano situated in Iceland – some 1600 miles from London. No flight is allowed at both arrival and departure of these airports and it will remain the case until at least Friday afternoon.

friends around the world have asked me to describe what I could observe, but weather conditions are pretty clear where I am, even if I do not understand or can not explain the magnitude of events. Of course, I naturally turned to the satellite imagery to get a better idea of the situation . The MODIS Rapid Response System NASA has collected a satellite image at the beginning of the afternoon, showing the site of the eruption expelling into the atmosphere a huge cloud of ash < / strong> heading to Europe – and consequently on the main airways used daily by thousands of planes. This image has been made available for download in Google Earth, you can retrieve it by clicking the KML file.