Eruption!

Two facts about me: 1) I study/am passionate about volcanoes, and 2) I am due to fly to Iceland in 2.5 weeks to live there for at least two years. To study volcanoes, precisely.
One fact about Iceland: There is a volcano erupting there! Now! Spectacularly! In a "let's shut down all northern european airports" kind of way!
One more fact about me: I am *not* in Iceland yet! Why? Why!

In any case - Eyjafjallajökull Volcano is erupting. Here a little compilation of some facts, photos and videos of the eruption, that started with a fissure eruption on March 20th, 2010 - click here for some amazing video footage of it. After having done the fissure eruption thing for 3.5 weeks, it started erupting more vigorously yesterday, sending ash high into the stratosphere. This latest event produced a very large ash plume, which immediately started drifting towards the south-east. This has been causing all sorts of mayhem in european airports, as a number of major airports, such as London Heathrow, were closed because of the very abrasive particules that are carried in the plume and have devastating effects on jet engines - as the very fine rock fragments erode the metal in the engine, clog fuel and cooling systems and forms melt films in the combustion chamber - here some more details about it. As is the case for several volcanoes in Iceland, it is covered by an ice cap, which has already started to cause all sorts of trouble (fire + ice = ??!) Stromboli online has, as always, some very nice pictures of the most recent lahars - mud flows caused by volcanic eruptions.

Several questions now arise - how long is the eruption going to last? How long can such an volcano produce an ash cloud susceptible to cause major disruptions to air travel? Can you imagine a situation where most european airports are closed for a week? A month? 6 months? Fellow geoscientists, to your models and calculators - we need to know! Most of all, I need to know if in order to start my project in Iceland on May 3rd, I need to row, row, row my boat all the way from Lausanne, Switzerland to Reykjavik, Iceland?

PS. - Here you can learn how to pronounce this wonderful word. By the way: It means "Island mountain glacier"...