Iceland eruption tapering off, spewing lava and less ash

A commercial helicopter pilot who flew over Eyjafjoell volcano in southern Iceland on Monday told AFP he saw fiery lava in the crater.

"We saw the eruption changing from being explosions of ash," Reynir Petursson said, resting by his helicopter in the village of Hofelstroem.

"It\'s the first day we saw lava. Itâ�s not flowing, but gushing."

Petursson\'s eye witness account confirmed geophysicists\' view that the volcano is starting to quieten six days after first erupting, spewing volcanic particles across Europe and causing the shutdown of air space.

"Currently the eruption has diminished markedly," Bryndis Brandsdottir of the University of Iceland told AFP, after studying seismological radar readings in the capital Reykjavik.

"The ash column does not rise above 3,000 metres (9,800 feet)," or less than half its original height, she said.

Geophysicist and civil protection advisor Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson agreed that the ash column was decreasing.

"Less ash has been generated over the last 36 hours than previously. The ash production has been reduced," he told AFP.

An AFP reporter at the base of the Eyjafjoell volcano saw a huge, yellowish cloud of ash over farmland. But the fog-like cloud was significantly less thick than during previous days of the eruption, which started in the early hours of last Wednesday.

Farmers in the area who faced flash floods of melted glacier water when the volcano first erupted, then a dense storm of ash, were hopeful, though still wary.

"We hope that it\'s coming to an end," said farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir, 53, in the hamlet of Nupur. "People are saying that the worst is over. We don\'t know for sure though. We know that anything can happen."

Petursson, who has flown over the volcano daily since the eruption, described the violent drama of lava bursting out from under the glacier that caps the mountain.

"You see lumps of lava 500 metres in the air. Some pieces are the size, I\'d say, of a small car. You have blast waves coming -- you see them approaching through the smoke. You hear them. It\'s like a knocking at the door of the helicopter," he said.

Experts said the volcanic cloud now reached about 3,000 metres, far below the towering 9,000 metres (29,527 foot) level reached initially.

That, as well as the decrease in ash, made it less likely that particles would carry on powerful high-altitude winds into Europe and into the air space used by airlines.

"As long as (the ash) doesn\'t reach any higher than now, the biggest problems are probably over," Icelandic meteorologist Oli Arnasson told AFP, pointing out that previously the ash had shot straight into the path of the mighty jet stream over the north-Atlantic island nation.

"Now it doesn\'t reach that high up. That\'s the main difference," he said.

The new ash could possibly still reach Britain, but "most of it will likely be falling out before it reaches Europe," he added.

If the ash did manage to travel the distance however, Norwegian meteorologist Haakon Melhuus cautioned changing wind directions could send the volcanic debris back towards Scandinavia -- where airports had just started opening up Monday.

Because of a shift in winds, "there will probably be fairly large concentrations of dust and such coming from (Iceland) across southern Scandinavia and eastward to Finland," he said.

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