Article taken from The Times (UK) dated March 25 after the first Iceland volcano eruption.Quote:A volcano that has been dormant for almost 200 years erupted on Sunday. Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland erupted with a sheet of fire and spewing out rivers of lava, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. For an Icelandic volcano this was a relatively small eruption, but there are fears that it could set off the nearby Katla volcano, a far more violent beast capable of inflicting immense damage.The precedents are not good. In the past 1,000 years, Eyjafjallajökull has erupted three times, in AD920, 1612 and 1821, and each time the Katla volcano blew up soon afterwards. And because Katla lies under a glacier, it sets off colossal floods as the ice rapidly melts. Worse still, Katla can shoot up enormous plumes of ash, gas and acid high into the atmosphere, blocking out the Sun’s energy and creating a deep chill.The effects on the UK could be severe. In June 1783 the Laki volcano close to Katla erupted for several months with clouds of poisonous gas that killed 9,000 people in Iceland. But the eruption also created a cold fog that spread across much of Europe and North America, in some places causing the coldest summer for 500 years as the Sun’s warmth was blotted out.“The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena,” wrote the naturalist Gilbert White in Hampshire. “The country people look with a kind of superstitious awe at the red louring aspect of the sun thro’ the fog.” The climate across the northern hemisphere was sent into upheaval, even weakening the monsoon rains in Africa and India, leading to famine in Egypt and India.