Volcanic Ash: Airport-Level Risk and Real-Time Colour Codes, Worldwide

Volcanic ash is one of the few hazards that can close a major airport with almost no notice, yet most risk feeds describe it at the level of a whole flight-information region — which is not actionable at the flight-planning level. This release changes three things.

Airport-level exposure. An eruption or ash advisory now returns the specific scheduled airports in the affected zone. When Etna erupted on 5 July 2026, that surfaced Catania alongside Reggio, Comiso, Palermo and Trapani — the field that closed and the ones flights diverted to.

Real-time colour codes, worldwide. Aviation colour codes (Green→Red) are read directly from the issuing observatories — USGS, INGV, the Icelandic Met Office, Indonesia's PVMBG and KVERT — plus the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, normalised to one scale across a 1,196-volcano registry.

Ahead of the advisory. Observatories usually raise a volcano's colour code during unrest, before the first ash advisory; nearby airports go on watch at that point. An independent satellite-thermal signal catches eruptions even where no observatory issues codes.

Available on the v3 scoring API as affected_airports, volcano_watch and thermal_watch.