When the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted on January 15, 65 kilometers north of Tonga’s capital, it caused a tsunami as well as a sonic boom that spread across the world — twice.
The explosion sent a large plume of water vapor into the stratosphere, which lies between 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. That water was enough to fill 58,000 Olympic swimming pools, according to NASA space discoveries.
It was detected by the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA’s Aura satellite. The satellite measures water vapor, ozone and other atmospheric gases. After the volcano erupted, scientists were surprised by the water vapor readings.
They estimate that the eruption sent 146 teragrams of water into the stratosphere. A teragram equals a trillion grams, in this case equal to 10% of the water already in the stratosphere.
That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that reached the stratosphere after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” study author Lewis Millan, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. “We had to carefully check all the measurements in the column to make sure they were trustworthy.”
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The Microwave Limb Sounder can measure and detect natural microwave signals from Earth’s atmosphere even through thick ash clouds.
“The MLS was the only instrument with sufficiently dense coverage to capture the plume of water vapor as it occurred, and the only instrument unaffected by the ash released by the volcano,” Millan said.
The Aura satellite was launched in 2004 and since then has only measured two volcanic eruptions that have thrown large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere. But the steam from the 2008 Casatucci event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile dissipated fairly quickly.
The Tonga eruption was different because the water vapor it sent into the atmosphere can trap heat, which can raise surface temperatures. The researchers say that excess water vapor can remain in the stratosphere for several years.
Excess water vapor in the stratosphere can also lead to chemical reactions that temporarily contribute to the depletion of Earth’s protective ozone layer.
Anatomy of the rash
Fortunately, the greenhouse effect of water vapor should be small and temporary, and it will dissipate as the excess vapor diminishes. The researchers don’t think this will be enough to exacerbate current conditions due to the climate crisis.
Researchers believe that the main reason for the amount of water vapor is due to the depth of the volcano’s caldera, 150 meters below the ocean surface.
If it was too deep, the ocean depth would have reduced the eruption, and if it was too shallow, the amount of seawater heated by the volcanic magma would not have matched the cause of the eruption. The researchers said the amount of seawater heated by the volcanic magma would not have matched the cause of the eruption.
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