Jen Southern

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/elegantfigures/?src=eoa-features

Robert Simmon, NASA Earth Observatory’s lead visualizer talks about how they made visualisations of the cloud of Icelandic volcanic ash. The widespread flight cancellations were not due to ash filling the skies but uncertainty about where the ash was. In accounts of travellers experiences during the volcanic activity this uncertainty in the sky also became uncertainty on the ground through boats, trains and coaches that might or might not be departing, routes across Europe that may or may not be possible, connections that may or may not be reached in time and flights that might or might start flying. (at Cemore‘s ‘Stranded: Lava, dust, people and aeroplanes‘ – workshop at Lancaster University)

These visualisations that communicate the spread of ash suggest an uncertain world, a stark contrast with the cloud free, easily browsed globe of google earth.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2010109/ – general satellite imagery page for real time images from Nasa’s Modis rapid response system

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=43684 – Images of Iceland and the volcanic eruption from Nasa’s ‘Earth Observatory’ pages

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/43000/43684/Germany_TMO_2010106_lrg.jpg

http://flightradar24.com/

and use of these images in a blog http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/tracking-the-volcanic-ash-cloud/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/8623301.stm

An image made available by NEODAAS/University of Dundee which shows the volcanic ash plume from Iceland, top left, to northern France as pictured by Nasa’s Terra Satellite on 17 April, 2010. All flights in and out of the UK and several other European countries have been suspended as ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland moves south.

Photo: NEODAAS/University of Dundee/AP