Volcanic ash in Google Earth

In April 2010, many of our readers were stranded in Uppsala, Sweden, following the EGEE 5th User Forum, when the Icelandic volcano known as Eyjafjallajökull erupted, filling the air with ash and grounding planes for kilometers. (Read about it here, here, and here.)

Last week another Icelandic volcano, Grimsvötn, erupted. The eruption inspired Google Earth enthusiast Adam Burt to revisit and improve upon a Google Earth visualization he'd created for Eyjafjallajökull (try saying that three times fast!).

According to Ogle Earth, Burt's visualization pulls data from the UK meteorological office every six hours, and uses it to show the ash density from Grimsvötn at different times and airspace heights. It can be played as an animation.

Latecomers may be disappointed, though. The dynamic animation (link will downlod kmz file) shows only the last two days, and at this point there isn't much to see. We recommend instead downloading the archived Google Earth file (link will open zip file), which shows the ash clouds from the time the volcano erupted through 29 May 2011.

Via VizWorld.