Do Iceland’s volcanoes pose a threat to the UK?

I recently gave a talk about the threat to the UK from Iceland’s volcanoes at the UK’s largest meeting of geography teachers, the GA Annual Conference.  The talk was kindly sponsored by WJEC, who filmed it and have posted the videos on YouTube.  The full talk is around 45 minutes long and is split over 4 videos.  This post brings them all to one place and provides links so that you can skip to topics of interest if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing.

Part 1 – Eyjafjallajökull 2010 and Grímsvötn 2011

• Introduction
• Products of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption (what makes eruptions explosive?)
• Eyjafjalljökull disruption and deposits outside Iceland
• Products of the 2011 Grímsvötn eruption (a powerful explosive basalt eruption)

Part 2 – Impacts of ash in the UK and on aviation

• Mapping Grímsvötn ash across the UK
• Citizen science sticky-tape sampling of ashfall in the UK
• A history of ash clouds and aviation
• Computer models of ash cloud dispersal

Part 3 – Perception and reality

• How often can we expect an eruption?
• Katla
• Hekla
• Volcanoes and climate

Part 4 – Potential impacts of the largest eruptions

• The large explosive Hekla 3 and 4 eruptions
• Mapping Hekla 3 and 4
• Large magnitude fissure eruptions (Laki)
• Effects in Europe
• Summary

Further reading

Much of the material in the talk has been covered in blog posts on this site.  You can see a full list of them on the Every Post Ever page.  Please bookmark the RSS feed if you want to keep up to date with the latest posts.  You can also follow me on Twitter.