Volcanic ash over Europe was an opportunity to make us useful for the society.

Volcanic ash reaching Europe in April 2010 traveled not as a compact mass, but dispersed between 2 and 14 Km, and this affected aviation and European economy.

People were not quite prepared to deal with such phenomena, although volcanic eruptions occur all over the globe. What make it so dangerous? The combination between the strength and the type of the eruption, together with a specific meteorological situation, which forced the ash cloud to remain suspended in Europe’s atmosphere for a long period of time. This is just an example, to make you understand the complexity of the atmosphere and in the same time the fragility of human race.  We want to control these phenomena or at least to forecast them, so that in the future we could be prepared. But in order to understand and forecast air quality, weather and climate,  we need data, from Romania as much as from Norway, on the vertical as much as on the surface. This is our job here: to measure, to analyze, and to correlate the information from different instruments. All with the purpose of serving our society.

With our (INOE) 3 aerosol lidar systems and ground-based instruments, we provided daily reports to EARLINET and various national authorities (civil aviation, weather service, environmental agencies) to advise them about plume trajectory, height and density. Team members participated in numerous mass-media interviews and debates regarding the impact of volcanic ash and Saharan dust on human's life, short and long term effects and risks.