• Question: what would we do if the volcano that is growing in iceland erupted and created an volcanic winter

    Asked by lugia to Angus, Christian, Hannah, Laura, Simon on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by jetski.
    • Photo: Angus Ferraro

      Angus Ferraro answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      That’s a really good question and quite a complicated one!

      For a good few years it would be a lot colder than normal. Farmers wouldn’t be able to produce as much food which would mean we would have to be careful not to waste food. In countries less fortunate than the UK a lot of people might run out of food.

      Some of the tiny particles produced by volcanoes are quite bad for your health, especially your lungs. One piece of research someone did suggests we could have about 100,000 extra deaths in Europe from a big eruption in Iceland. That’s pretty scary! It does depend on whether the wind blows the particles towards Europe, though.

    • Photo: Laura Roberts Artal

      Laura Roberts Artal answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Events like the one you ask about have happened in the past. Much has changed since the eruption I’ll describe below, so I’m not certain an eruption would affect humans in exactly the same way now, but it is still very interesting to learn about what happened in the past.
      Laki, in Iceland, erupted in 1783 and the eruption lasted for 8 months and had severe climate consequences across the globe. On Iceland 10-25% of the population died due to a famine, whilst 80% of sheep and 50% of cattle died. Europe experienced one of the hottest summers on record and then one of the coldest winters, leading to poor crops and poverty and famines. It is believed it might have affect the strength of monsoons both in Africa and India and America also experienced one of the oldest winters on record.

    • Photo: Christian Maerz

      Christian Maerz answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I understand your question as: What kind of measures would people take to deal with the consequences of such an eruption, right?
      Well to be very honest, there is not a lot we can do about the basic situation – nature is just much stronger than any kind of technology that mankind has created so far… Probably it would be much like in a situation of war. Food and water would have to be rationalised (that would probably be controlled by the governments and the military, which is never a good thing…). Energy demands would sky-rocket, and we could not use any solar power at all (as the sunlight would be blocked by volcanic dust). Some parts of the planet would be more strongly affected by it than others – essentially, in regions where people are already struggling today, the outcomes would be catastrophic! In more industrialised countries with a good infrastructure, we could probably cope for a couple of years, maybe longer. But really food would be the many issue, as all we eat essentially depends on sunlight.

    • Photo: Simon Holyoake

      Simon Holyoake answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      if it was a particularly long volcanic winter, I would suggest that developing a taste for hydroponically grown food would help!

      As the others have said, it would have profound effects on global climate as well as the way we live our lives!

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