Eruptions can produce not only flows of incandescent material along the slopes of a volcano but also ash plumes in the troposphere [ Sparks et al. , 1997] that can threaten aircraft flying in the vicinity [ Fisher et al. , 1997]. To protect aircraft, passengers, and crews, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Meteorological Organization created eight Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers (VAAC, http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/vaac.html) around the globe with the goal of tracking volcanic plumes and releasing eruption alerts to airports, pilots, and companies. Currently, the VAAC monitoring system is based mostly on the monitoring systems of any local volcano observatories and on real‐time monitoring of data acquired by meteorological satellites.