Far North Science

A Russian volcano network that warns North Pacific airliners about eruptions has solved its budget crisis and went back online Monday, April 9, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Sheveluch Volcano produces a mushroom cloud. Photo was
taken near Klyuchi by Yuri Demyanchuk, Levinson-Lessing
Kamchatkan Volcanological Station
AVO / KVERT

The Kamchatkan Volcanic Eruption Respnse Team (KVERT) temporarily went silent March 1 due to budget cuts, increasing the risk that aircraft could have entered undetected ash clouds and experienced sudden catastrophic engine failure during a trans-ocean flight.

During the month with reduced monitoring, the Alaska warning center continued to issue alerts about Kamchatkan volcanoes, working with unofficial reports from Russian scientists, weather satellites, the FAA and Japanese flight controllers.

“There were no significant difficulties or close calls,” said Thomas Murray, AVO scientist-in-charge. “Activity was relatively quiet.”

When fully operational, the KVERT center monitors 29 active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula and gives the world a heads-up when they grow restless. An eruption can send ash clouds roiling into air traffic lanes. Having a network operated in real-time by Russian scientists with local knowledge is essential for full protection, Alaska volcanologists say, particularly during bad weather or other conditions where satellite coverage cannot pinpoint the plume.

The most recent KVERT information release describes how three Kamchatkan volcanoes have been regularly exploding and producing ash, including the 10,770-foot Sheveluch Volcano.

Satellites show the top of a dark, ash-rich eruption cloud
from Sheveluch Volcano on March 29, 2007.
AVO / KVERT

The issue is not academic. Hundreds of jet flights cross the North Pacific between North America and Asia each week, carrying up to 20,000 passengers and millions of dollars in cargo every day. Along the way, they run a gauntlet of active Alaskan and Russian volcanoes, marking the northern rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the world’s prime geologic hotspots.

When sucked up by air intakes, the tiny abrasive ash particles of rock and glass produced by an eruption can destroy or damage jet engines and turbines, causing aircraft to plummet from the sky.

In December, 1989, a KLM Boeing 747 with 231 passengers and 13 crew flew into a Redoubt Volcano ash cloud about 25,000 feet above Talkeetna, about 100 miles north of Anchorage. All four engines quit. The jumbo jet plunged for the next 12 minutes, dropping more than two miles, before the pilot managed to restart the engines. Minutes later it landed in Anchorage with no serious injuries among its terrified and shaken passengers, and $50 million in damage to its engines.

At least 100 other aircraft have flown into ash clouds during the past 20 years across the world. No one has died, but equipment has sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

To avoid such a catastrophe, the North Pacific volcanic chains have been monitored around the clock by American and Russian scientists since the early 1990s.

Founded in 1988, AVO began watching the four active volcanoes in Cook Inlet and quickly expanded coverage down the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Chain. Now more than 20 volcanoes have been wired with seismic sensors and webcams, while the observatory’s 22 full-time staffers conduct research and issue daily reports about volcanic action.

The Kamchatkan Volcanic Eruption Response Team, or KVERT, started operations in 1993 in cooperation with the Alaska observatory. The Russian scientists used their local network of seismic stations and field observations, combined with American satellite images, to share updates of volcanic activity on the peninsula with the world.

Ash cloud from Klyuchevskoy Volcano crosses
air traffic lanes on Oct. 1, 1994
USGS KVERT Fact Sheet

In the first nine years of operation, the team issued 500 information releases and dozens of eruption alerts to airlines and emergency response agencies, according to a KVERT profile published online by the U.S. Geological Survey. Despite hundreds of thousands of flights during eruptive periods, no aircraft has reported damage from Kamchatkan volcanic ash, according to AVO.

The most dramatic success came on Oct. 1, 1994, when Klyuchevskoy Volcano blasted ash 49,000 feet into the sky after three weeks of restless low-level earthquakes. The plume rode 150 mph winds more than 620 miles southeast and crossed into North Pacific air traffic lanes between 31,000 and 38,000 feet above the ocean.

KVERT personnel issued an alert and, working with the AVO, within two hours, aviation authorities had rerouted flights to avoid the ash.

This winter, Russian scientists notified AVO that the Federal Unitary Enterprise State Air Traffic Management Corporation of Russia stopped paying for KVERT operations on Jan. 1 and the team would no longer be able to issue alerts as of March 1. The AVO site posted a message this week saying the KVERT center had resumed operations on April 9.

KVERT people told him that the agency restored funding to the observatory, Murray said in an email message. No other details emerged from Russia.

Alerts about Kamchatka Volcanoes should come from Kamchatkan scientists and should only be cobbled together by scientists on other continents as a last resort, Alaska volcanologists say. A volcano observatory pulls together data from many sources — field measurements, pilot reports, ground observers, satellite images — and then evaluates it all based on previous experience with the specific volcano.