So, what's the story?
Well, we all know a volcano in Iceland went a little wild, and I just wanted to know how awesome Iceland was at exporting volcanic ash compared to things like roe or salted fish.
Scientifically speaking, it turns out that Iceland is very very awesome at exporting volcanic ash. In that big ol' 2010 block something like 1 pixel is non-ash exports.
Where is your data from?
It's mostly from this page from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland, as well as Statistics Iceland.
The ash data is a couple steps away from the original data, courtesy all of the mathing on this Ask Metafilter question. We know ~100 million m3 of tephra got into the air, so then we assume it weighs about 700-1200kg/m3, and voila! We get something around 90,000 million metric tons. I get to avoid the word 'billion' here because it'll just make everyone confused.
Also, in case you were curious, all of the tons are metric. They're about 2,200 pounds apiece.
Who are you?
Hi, I'm Soma! I live in Brooklyn and make things. Infographics, web apps, benches - whatever's convenient. Maybe you want to know where everyone single in the US lives, what the best schools in NYC are, how to make the most of the subway, or maybe even what Japan is up to at 3:45 AM?
I also spend a lot of time working on Brooklyn Brainery, a super awesome collaborative learning organization that you should definitely check out. Solve all of our problems over here.
Hate mail, love letters and job offers can head on over to jonathan.soma@gmail.com, or track me down @dangerscarf.