Ash? Particles Found Inside the NASA DC8 which Encountered Hekla's February 2000 Stratospheric Volcanic Cloud--a Needle in a Haystack.

As part of our remote sensing efforts on the Hekla eruption (Rose et al, this session) we have performed an extensive SEM examination of particles provided us by Tom Grindle of NASA Dryden. These particles came from the engines and filters of the NASA DC8 that was damaged by its encounter with the Hekla volcanic cloud at 76N 0W at 0510 UT on 28 February 2000, about 35 hours after the explosive phase of the eruption. Finding definitive evidence of ash in these samples was difficult because other kinds of particles were also present, possibly the result of uncontrolled sampling times. Strong evidence for ash comes from the damage reflected in the aircraft (T. Grindle, 2000, personal communication) and from aerosol number density measurements in the volcanic cloud reported by T M Miller et al (2000, EOS Transactions 81 (48) F1277). The early, most explosive part of the Hekla eruption likely was gas-rich but contained some ash that was andesitic or basaltic andesitic in composition (A. Hoskuldsson, pers comm, 2001). The ash in this early component could not be detected by satellite remote sensing, perhaps because it was masked by the effects of abundant ice. Since ice masses were estimated at <100 kT in the cloud, it is likely that ash masses were even less. Because we are interested in aircraft hazard mitigation, it is important to establish clearly that ash was present in the aircraft and to try to estimate its concentration. We found large amounts of metal alloy particles in one of the engines and a dominance of angular feldspar and other silicates in the other engine and filter samples. We expanded our search of the silicate materials and obtained samples of the early, most silicic ash from Iceland for comparative analytical work. This was still inconclusive prior to abstract submittal.