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New paper! What kind of impacts does volcanic ashfall have on airport operations? We compiled as many events as possible over the past ~80 years to look at the relationship between ashfall thickness at an airport during an eruption and what kind of impacts it causes. doi.org/10.1186/s136...

Volcanic ash is a significant hazard to aviation due to its potential to cause physical impacts and disrupt aviation networks through airspace and airport closures. Until now, ashfall impacts on airport operations have received much less attention than airborne ash impacts on aircraft and aviation. The time and resources taken to remove ashfall from runways and airport infrastructure can cause extended disruption to the aviation network beyond the presence of ash in the atmosphere. Using publicly available information, we have compiled a global dataset of 334 volcano-related airport impact events between 1944 and 2024. The dataset includes events at 141 unique airports in 44 different countries and territories, caused by eruptions from 73 different volcanoes. The countries with the most events are Indonesia (52), Mexico (27), and New Zealand (27), and the most impacted airports are Catania-Fontanarossa International Airport (20), Puebla International Airport (15), and La Nubia Airport (12). The volcanoes responsible for the most airport impact events (besides Eyjafjallajökull) are Etna (24), Soufriere Hills (22), and Popocatépetl (22). We used 74 data-rich, ashfall-induced events from this dataset to categorise ashfall impacts into five states of closure: <1 day, 1–2 days, > 2–7 days, > 1 week (finite), and permanent, and present fragility curves for each state. Data points are concentrated between 0.1- and 100-mm thickness such that fragility curve uncertainties are greatest at the smaller (< 0.1 mm) and larger (> 100 mm) thicknesses. The curves show that there is an > 80% probability of airport closure of any duration even for trace (defined here as 0.1 mm) amounts of ashfall. Closures of more than one day under trace ashfall are much more probable than closures lasting more than two days (30% vs. 6%, respectively), and once ashfall of 10 mm thickness is reached closures of more than two days are highly probable (> 85%). The development of continuous fragility curves from empirical airport closure data represents an advance that will prove useful for hazard management and long-term forecasting closure at airports. To illustrate the potential impacts of varying closure durations on flights and passengers, we provide a case study of the simulated closure of Ninoy Aquino International Airport in the Philippines. In addition to ashfall thickness, closure duration is affected by airport or national emergency management policies, resources available (personnel and equipment), and environmental conditions. This dataset and the derived curves provide a starting point and global evidence base for better understanding the impact of volcanic ashfall on airport operations.

The result was a collection of 334 volcano-related airport closures since the 1940s with varying degrees of qualitative and quantitative information available. Years with many closures are often linked to extreme or extended events (e.g., Pinatubo 1991, Puyhue-Cordón Caulle 2011).

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A huge thank you to our past members: Alex lezzi, Omari Graham, Sandy Drymoni, Silvia Vallejo, and Jamie Farquharson. Your involvement, leadership, and support helped shape this group into what it is today. 💫

We wanted to see what the relationship is between different thicknesses of ashfall at an airport and different levels of disruption (in this case, the length of airport closure). So we started by creating a dataset of all the volcanic events we could find that resulted in airport closures.

In terms of which volcanoes seem to have impacted airports the most, Etna (Italy), Soufrière Hills (Montserrat), and Popocatépetl (Mexico) have caused the most closures (besides Eyjafjallajökull, of course, which is estimated to have caused closures to over 300 airports all by itself in 2010).

Volcanic ash can cause a range of impacts to airborne and grounded airplanes, so most airports stop operations with even trace amounts of ash detected on the ground. This type of disruption requires cleanup and other logistics and might continue even after nearby airspace is safe to use.

So where do the most closures seem to happen? Indonesia, Mexico, and New Zealand appear the most in our dataset, while Catania-Fontanarossa, Puebla (Mexico), and La Nubia (Colombia) Airports closed the most times due to volcanic-related events (typically either ashfall or airborne ash).