Research funded by New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission (EQC) has produced a way of calculating where volcanic ash is most likely to fall, and its thickness.

EQC Manager Research Strategy and Investment Richard Smith says it is a significant advance in understanding the impact of volcanic activity.

“The research has developed a model to show where in New Zealand would be at risk of ash fall that could affect buildings, farms and people under different volcanic eruption scenarios,” he said. “This is a big help for emergency management planning and risk reduction activity.”

Research team leader Simon Barker, from Victoria University of Wellington, says the model involves a complicated calculation drawing on volcanology, geology and meteorology.

“Volcanic ash is magma that has come to the surface and exploded into tiny particles of glass and crystals,” he said. “Part of modelling the ash fall is to understand how big those fragments are likely to be and where they will move through the atmosphere. We based our work on the giant Taupo volcano.

“We created scenarios based on different eruption sizes, spanning several orders of magnitude in volume, added in the weather data, and ran each scenario 1000 times to see where the ash would fall, and how thick the resulting deposits will be.”