IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v51y2009i2p287-302.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Volcanic hazards to airports

Author

Listed:
  • Marianne Guffanti
  • Gari Mayberry
  • Thomas Casadevall
  • Richard Wunderman

Abstract

Volcanic activity has caused significant hazards to numerous airports worldwide, with local to far-ranging effects on travelers and commerce. Analysis of a new compilation of incidents of airports impacted by volcanic activity from 1944 through 2006 reveals that, at a minimum, 101 airports in 28 countries were affected on 171 occasions by eruptions at 46 volcanoes. Since 1980, five airports per year on average have been affected by volcanic activity, which indicates that volcanic hazards to airports are not rare on a worldwide basis. The main hazard to airports is ashfall, with accumulations of only a few millimeters sufficient to force temporary closures of some airports. A substantial portion of incidents has been caused by ash in airspace in the vicinity of airports, without accumulation of ash on the ground. On a few occasions, airports have been impacted by hazards other than ash (pyroclastic flow, lava flow, gas emission, and phreatic explosion). Several airports have been affected repeatedly by volcanic hazards. Four airports have been affected the most often and likely will continue to be among the most vulnerable owing to continued nearby volcanic activity: Fontanarossa International Airport in Catania, Italy; Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Alaska, USA; Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Quito, Ecuador; and Tokua Airport in Kokopo, Papua New Guinea. The USA has the most airports affected by volcanic activity (17) on the most occasions (33) and hosts the second highest number of volcanoes that have caused the disruptions (5, after Indonesia with 7). One-fifth of the affected airports are within 30 km of the source volcanoes, approximately half are located within 150 km of the source volcanoes, and about three-quarters are within 300 km; nearly one-fifth are located more than 500 km away from the source volcanoes. The volcanoes that have caused the most impacts are Soufriere Hills on the island of Montserrat in the British West Indies, Tungurahua in Ecuador, Mt. Etna in Italy, Rabaul caldera in Papua New Guinea, Mt. Spurr and Mt. St. Helens in the USA, Ruapehu in New Zealand, Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, and Anatahan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (part of the USA). Ten countries—USA, Indonesia, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea, Italy, New Zealand, Philippines, Mexico, Japan, and United Kingdom—have the highest volcanic hazard and/or vulnerability measures for airports. The adverse impacts of volcanic eruptions on airports can be mitigated by preparedness and forewarning. Methods that have been used to forewarn airports of volcanic activity include real-time detection of explosive volcanic activity, forecasts of ash dispersion and deposition, and detection of approaching ash clouds using ground-based Doppler radar. Given the demonstrated vulnerability of airports to disruption from volcanic activity, at-risk airports should develop operational plans for ashfall events, and volcano-monitoring agencies should provide timely forewarning of imminent volcanic-ash hazards directly to airport operators. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Suggested Citation

  • Marianne Guffanti & Gari Mayberry & Thomas Casadevall & Richard Wunderman, 2009. "Volcanic hazards to airports," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 51(2), pages 287-302, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:51:y:2009:i:2:p:287-302
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-008-9254-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-008-9254-2
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-008-9254-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sebastien Biass & Corine Frischknecht & Costanza Bonadonna, 2012. "A fast GIS-based risk assessment for tephra fallout: the example of Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador-Part II: vulnerability and risk assessment," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 64(1), pages 615-639, October.
    2. Daniel M. Blake & Thomas M. Wilson & Jim W. Cole & Natalia I. Deligne & Jan M. Lindsay, 2017. "Impact of Volcanic Ash on Road and Airfield Surface Skid Resistance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-30, August.
    3. Sebastien Biass & Costanza Bonadonna, 2013. "A fast GIS-based risk assessment for tephra fallout: the example of Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 65(1), pages 477-495, January.
    4. Sebastien Biass & Corine Frischknecht & Costanza Bonadonna, 2013. "A fast GIS-based risk assessment for tephra fallout: the example of Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 65(1), pages 497-521, January.
    5. Daniel M. Blake & Thomas M. Wilson & Carol Stewart, 2018. "Visibility in airborne volcanic ash: considerations for surface transportation using a laboratory-based method," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(1), pages 381-413, May.
    6. Grant Wilson & Thomas Wilson & Jim Cole & Christopher Oze, 2012. "Vulnerability of laptop computers to volcanic ash and gas," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 63(2), pages 711-736, September.
    7. Seyun Kim & Jiseon Lee & Soohwan Oh & Yoonjin Yoon, 2019. "Assessment of the volcanic hazard of Mt. Paektu explosion to international air traffic using South Korean airspace," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 96(2), pages 647-667, March.
    8. Geoff Main & John Schembri & Ritienne Gauci & Kevin Crawford & David Chester & Angus Duncan, 2018. "The hazard exposure of the Maltese Islands," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(2), pages 829-855, June.
    9. K. Konstantinou, 2015. "Potential for future eruptive activity in Taiwan and vulnerability to volcanic hazards," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 75(3), pages 2653-2671, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:51:y:2009:i:2:p:287-302. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.