Volcanic Eruptions

[Cookie]

Sorry if this the wrong place for this.


Do they and can they have an effect on hurricanes at all?

after the eruptions in iceland over the weekend. I was intrested to know.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8578576.stm

[Ad Novoxium]

Fortunately, Iceland's pretty much "in the clear" due to hostile conditions up there. As for hurricanes and volcanoes, the only related cases in which a cyclone and a volcano occured around the same time as far as I know were in 1991 and 1994, during Pinatubo. In both cases, a cyclone (a typhoon in 91 and a tropical storm in 94) struck around the same time as the volcano and caused added damage.

Notably, both storms had the exact same name: Yunya.

As for whether a volcano can influence them, I'm not sure.

[HURAKAN]

Maybe a major volcanic eruption can have some effect. Maybe an eruption like Krakatoa's, Tambora's or Toba's but not this one. In general the answer is no but if you have an eruption like Yellowstone's, then we're talking about something much more different. You would need a lot of material in the atmosphere.

[cycloneye]

I always wonder if the Soufriere volcano in the island of Montserrat makes an eruption while a hurricane moves toward the Leewards what would occur.

[Cookie]

thanks for the answers guys

[Macrocane]

I don't know the effects that a volcanic eruption has on a tropical cyclone but I can tell about the very destructive effects if having both at the same time.

For example, in El Salvador on October 1st 2005 the Santa Ana volcano made a very significant eruption that produced great amounts of ash, rocks and deadly lahars that destroyed everything on their paths. One day later hurrican Stan produced indirect but very heavy rains over the country and the rains produced new lahars even more destructive than the ones on October 1. Dozens of homes were destroyed and all the lahars ended their road in the Coatepeque lake increasing the level of the waters.

Another example is the very big eruption of the Pinatubo on June 13 1991, this is what wiki says about it:

On the same day, Typhoon Yunya struck the island, passing about 75 km (50 miles) north of the volcano. The typhoon rains made direct visual observations of the eruption impossible, but measurements showed that ash was ejected to heights of 34 km by the most violent phase of the eruption, which lasted about three hours. Pyroclastic flows poured from the summit, reaching as far as 16 km away from it. Typhoon rains mixed with the ash deposits caused massive lahars.