Closing airspace over eruption due to Eyjafjallajökull ash was "right decision"

There has been an awful lot of debate about the decision to close the airspace over Europe for days during the beginning of the explosive phase at Eyjafjallajökull last spring. Many critics of the closure said that European officials didn't have enough hard data, such as actual ash particulate counts or imagery of the location of ash in the atmosphere. However, much of this type of data was impossible to collect on a meaningful level because the apparatus was not in place for this type of rapid data collection of ash in the skies of Europe.