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Volcano Slows Global Warming

The ash plume emitted by Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano might make a mess of jet engines but is delivering an unexpected benefit.

Aircraft in the EU produce an estimated 200 million to 220 million tons of CO2 a year. In the five days of heavy flight restrictions in Europe,  aircraft on the ground emitted an estimated 2.7 million tons less CO2 than they would have in the air. Not a lot, but enough to roughly cover the annual emissions of Latvia, or a month of the emissions from Austria (at least the non-car emissions as accounted for in the European market for CO2, the Emissions Trading System.)

Not all flights were halted in the last five days, as Southern Europe escaped the cloud. However, aircraft warm up the planet in other ways apart from emitting CO2. The other warming effects–vapor trails and emissions of oxides of nitrogen, for example–double the environmental impact of their CO2 emissions, explains Peter Lockley, head of transport policy at environmental organization WWF in the U.K.

He also notes that the volcanic eruption emits CO2, but that it has a net cooling effect, because the sulphur it coughs out cools down the temperature in the atmosphere.

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