The Map Room

NASA and the European Space Agency have each posted same-day satellite imagery of the ash plume from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano: NASA from the MODIS instrument aboard its Terra satellite, the ESA from Envisat (at right).

Previously: Earth Observatory and Eyjafjallajökull; Eyjafjallajökull and European Airspace; Eyjafjallajökull.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has posted a lot of images of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption; handily, there’s an index.

Previously: Eyjafjallajökull and European Airspace; Eyjafjallajökull.

The Norwegian Meteorological Office has put together a time-lapse animation showing the spread of the ash cloud emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. I’ve converted it from the original animated GIF, which is nearly 14 MB, and uploaded it here. Yellow indicates ash that has fallen by itself, red ash that has fallen as a result of precipitation, and black where the ash cloud is at that moment in time. More information (in Norwegian) here.

Radar Virtuel is a map of European airspace that shows the real-time positions of aircraft; lately it has been showing (1) an overlay of the ash cloud and (2) not many aircraft in the air. For obvious reasons the site has been kind of hard to load lately (or I would have been able to mention it in my previous entry on Eyjafjallajökull). Via Mapperz.

There are satellite images of the ash clouds thrown up by the eruption of the volcano under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull glacier; the one above, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite on Wednesday, shows the ash plume following a straight line from the glacier to the Faroe and Shetland Islands. Here’s an alternate link; these images show a closer view of Eyjafjallajökull. More about this at Universe Today and Bad Astronomy. See Google LatLong and Google Earth Blog on viewing the imagery in Google Earth. See Google Maps Mania on maps showing the impact of the ash plume on air traffic in northwestern Europe.

Update: The Met Office has maps forecasting the ash cloud’s spread; this map on Wikimedia Commons is derived from that data.

Update, 6:43 PM EDT: NASA’s Earth Observatory has a map of “aerosol optical thickness,” on the basis that satellite imagery is insufficient at showing the problem.

Update, April 16 at 6:20 PM EDT: NASA continues to add satellite imagery, including some telling infrared imagery, to this page.