Eyjafjallajökull: The volcano that stopped a continent

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2010, a previously little-known Icelandic volcano erupted twice, sending a huge plume of volcanic ash all over Europe. The ash cloud grounded flights for days, causing disruption for millions of passengers. Reena Stanton-Sharma talks to Icelandic geophysicist and Eyjafjallajökull-watcher, Sigrun Hreinsdottir. This programme was first broadcast in 2022. (Photo: The awesome power of Eyjafjallajökull. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:09.0	We're taking you back to March 2010 to give you a bird's eye view of one a volcano erupted in Iceland and caused
0:18.1	chaos across Europe.
0:20.7	It was the start of a disaster for airlines as hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded.
0:27.0	In 2022, Rina Stanton Sharma spoke to a scientist who saw it all happen.
0:35.0	It was unreal.
0:37.0	There was always this question what if it would erupt,
0:40.0	but I never really thought I would witness this in my lifetime.
0:43.0	It was really the first eruption I see after becoming a scientist and it was just it was just incredible.
0:50.0	That's Sigran Horaines Dotier, a geophysicist who'd been studying a volcano called
0:54.8	Aya Fyatilayokud on the south coast of Iceland.
0:58.5	It hadn't erupted for almost 200 years.
1:02.0	Then, one day, she got a call from the Coast Guard.
1:04.8	They were there wasn't the greatest so we went on a plane with the Coast Guard,
1:08.8	few scientists, a few media people and we took a circle around the volcano.
1:15.0	First when we saw that eruption it was just on the screens of the plane like the radar images,
1:20.0	like a big blob of light and we could start seeing it through the window and then we just
1:26.8	got you know closer and closer and it was just this it was just so amazing to see this out of the little winter.
1:34.0	We were in the dark, it was in the middle of the night,
1:40.0	and we just see this beautiful little fisher in the surface.
1:45.2	It was like in this blackish area.
1:48.1	There was very little snow there.
	...

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