On 15 January 2022, the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai erupted, unleashing an impressive tsunami that destroyed properties and brought about 4 deaths all over Tonga. Some other lasting impact of this match — the most important underwater explosion ever recorded by way of fashionable medical tools — used to be the massive quantity of aerosol and water vapor plumes it introduced skyward.Schoeberl et al. tested how Hunga’s eruption affected local weather within the Southern Hemisphere over the next 2 years. They discovered that within the 12 months following the eruption, the cooling impact from the volcanic aerosols reflecting daylight into outer house used to be more potent than the warming brought about by way of water vapors trapping warmth within the setting. However lots of the volcano’s results had dissipated by way of the tip of 2023.The researchers used satellite tv for pc information to inspect how stratospheric aerosols, gases, and temperatures modified after the eruption. The Hunga eruption contributed about 150 metric megatons of water vapor into the stratosphere — an quantity so top that it raised world ranges of stratospheric water vapor by way of about 10%. This large water injection cooled temperatures within the tropical stratosphere by way of 4°C in March and April of 2022. In flip, this brief cooling created a secondary circulate development that resulted in lowered ozone ranges all over 2022.The Hunga eruption additionally launched between 0.5 and 1.5 metric megatons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Sulfur dioxide produces sulfate aerosols that mirror daylight and will reason a discount in floor radiative forcing, or the adaptation between incoming and outgoing radiation. This may end up in world cooling if the aerosol load is huge sufficient, because it used to be within the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which launched about 20 metric megatons of sulfur dioxide. The Hunga aerosol load used to be now not very massive, and its results have been most commonly confined to the Southern Hemisphere in 2022 and 2023.
The January 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai eruption used to be the most important underwater explosion ever recorded by way of fashionable medical tools. (Symbol credit score: Japan Meteorological Company, CC BY 4.0, by the use of Wikimedia Commons)Even though the eruption did have an effect on Earth’s radiative steadiness in brief, that modify used to be very small: an international lower in radiative flux of not up to 0.25 watt in step with sq. meter over the 2-year duration sooner than it returned to preeruption ranges. (Globally, Earth’s floor, oceans, and setting soak up a mean of about 240 watts of solar energy in step with sq. meter over the process a 12 months.) This temporary alternate implies that Hunga’s eruption will have brought about slight cooling within the Southern Hemisphere, however the researchers say it will be difficult to glean that very same knowledge from meteorological observations by myself. (Magazine of Geophysical Analysis: Atmospheres, 2024)This newsletter used to be at the beginning revealed on Eos.org. Learn the unique article.Get the arena’s most enticing discoveries delivered instantly on your inbox.
