In the spring of 2010, the explosive eruption of an Icelandic volcano disrupted airplane routes in and out of Europe for weeks. The enormous ash cloud that shrouded much of the North Atlantic Ocean was bad enough, but pilots were particularly concerned about sudden rises and drops in the height of the cloud, which made flying over it more unpredictable and dangerous. Researchers may have found a way to solve this problem by analyzing the ash cloud's static electricity, which is eventually discharged as bolts of lightning. We can conclude from the information in the passage that