A column of steam and ash rises out of an erupting volcano near Eyjafjallajokull April 19, 2010HO
Its Global Volcanism Program number is 1702-02. But for most people, Eyjafjallajökull, the epicentre of the current ash-related travel crisis, is simply the most famous volcano no one can pronounce.
Monday, it appeared to enter a new phase of its eruption, with its plume of ash diminishing, and observers noting the first signs of lava flow in recent weeks.
"The eruption has diminished markedly," Bryndis Brandsdottir, of the University of Iceland, told the AFP. "The ash column does not rise above 3,000 metres," or less than half its original height, she added.
But the volcano's reputation is only getting hotter.
On Facebook, a group called One Million Strong Against the Icelandic Volcano promotes a "growing worldwide movement to stop Eyjafjallajökull, the evil Icelandic volcano, from ruining everything."
At Eyjafjallajökull.com, the Eyjafjallajökull Art Project displays works of art inspired by the ash-spewing glacier.
T-shirts pay homage to its air traffic-stopping power and photographs posted on line capture a lightning storm caused by electrical discharge within the ash column, making it look like some sort of heavenly battle is being waged on the volcano top.
But the landscape that surrounds Eyjafjallajökull is silent and stark. Few trees grow in Iceland, and the volcano sits amid a grey, rolling landscape dotted with black volcanic rock. The mountains are not as high or majestic as the Rockies, and they sit under a layer of perennial snow and dark black cinder ash.
Located near the island's southern coast, Eyjafjallajökull is actually one of the Iceland's smallest and least threatening volcanoes, standing at just 1,666 metres.
It is not a beautiful cone-shaped volcano like Mount Fuji in Japan, but an elongated ridge stretching for more than two kilometres under a cap of glacial ice. Reversely magnetized rock indicates that there has been volcanic activity beneath the surface for almost a million years.
The ground here is as unreliable as current global flight times. Between 1991 and 2006, more than 860 earthquakes rattled the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, according to a study by the Icelandic Meteorological Institute, perhaps an early signal that magma was starting to make its way to the surface.
It has erupted only 10 times, but one incident lasted almost two years. And the type of eruptions is what makes Eyjafjallajökull so mesmerizing, said Dr. Catherine Hickson, a specialist in sub glacial volcanoes with the Magma Energy Corporation.
When a volcano erupts underneath a glacier, magma comes into contact with water, creating a phreatic explosion that shoots steam, water, ash and rock into the air.
"It reacts explosively," Dr. Hickson said. "These are some of the most explosive eruptions you can have."
Unlike Mount St. Helens, which burned itself into the North American psyche with a fierce but short-lived eruption, Dr. Hickson said, Icelandic eruptions tend to persevere for days or months. In Hawaii, she said, a similar eruption has been bubbling since 1986.
"It would not be unexpected for this eruption to continue to carry on."
The plume of ash has gotten smaller, she said, because the heat of the volcano has melted the surrounding glacier, meaning that less water is reacting with the magma. If a new fissure opens up beneath a different part of the glacier, the ash could fly again.
"It really depends on how the eruption evolves," she said.
Trouble began at Eyjafjallajökull on March 20, when a red cloud was spotted above the glacier, and the first eruption occurred in a pass of ice-free land between Eyjafjallajökull and a neighbouring volcano called Katla.
Two weeks later, the current eruption began around midnight on April 14, in the glacier's central calderra, or crater.
Glyn Williams-Jones, a volcanologist at Simon Fraser University, visited Iceland two years ago and said the entire island is essentially being ripped apart from below.
"It's sitting on a hot spot, so you've got a big pulse of magma coming up from the core of the Earth," he said. " But it also sits on the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is where new ocean floor is created all the time."
And while Eyjafjallajökull is a threat, it's nothing compared to Katla, a larger and more dangerous volcano. In the past 1,100 years, every time Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, Katla has soon followed suit.
"The volcanoes appear to be linked in some way, but it's not quite clear how," Dr. Williams-Jones said. "We don't really know what's down there."