Tonga volcanic eruption

Volcano Horna Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, which erupted on January 15 this year, sent a tsunami racing to the whole world and triggered an Sonic explosion that surrounded the world twice.

The underwater eruption in the southern Pacific Ocean also condemned a very large lump of water vapor into the stratosphere of the earth-sufficient to fill more than 58,000 Olympic swimming pools.

How Tonga volcanic eruptions can affect the temperature of the earth

The amount of water vapor released in a volcanic eruption can be enough to affect the average global temperature of the earth for a while.

According to NASA, the water vapor released in a volcanic eruption can end while warming the surface of the earth.

What has never happened before about the Tonga volcanic eruption

Volcanic eruptions rarely inject a lot of water into the stratosphere. In 18 years NASA has been measuring, only two other eruptions – Kasatochi 2008 events in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – send large amounts of water vapor to a high height.

But that is only a blip compared to the Tonga events, and the water vapor from the two previous eruptions disappeared quickly. The excess of water vapor injected by Tonga volcanoes, on the other hand, can remain in the stratosphere for several years.

This extra water vapor can affect the chemistry of the atmosphere, increase certain chemical reactions that can temporarily worsen the depletion of the ozone layer. It can also affect surface temperature.

The effect of heating due to the eruption of the Tonga volcano can disappear in time

Eruption of volcano large -magnitude such as Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo usually chill the surface of the earth by removing gas, dust, and ash that reflects sunlight back into space. Conversely, the Tonga volcano does not inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and a large amount of water vapor from the eruption may have a small temporary heating effect, because water vapor trap heat.

The effect will disappear when extra water vapor cycles come out of the stratosphere and will not be enough to worsen the effects of climate change.

Right depth at sea

The amount of water that is injected into the stratosphere is likely only possible because the underwater-depressed volcanic caldera in the form of a basin that is usually formed after magma erupts or flows from a shallow space under the volcano at the exact depth of the sea: about 490 feet (150 meters ) down.

Every more shallow, and there will be not enough sea water that is very hot by magma that erupts to take into account the values ​​of the stratosphere’s water vapor observed by the NASA research team, and everything that , and a large pressure in the depth of the ocean can swift the eruption, the eruption can switch the eruption.

146 Terragram of Water Saps Injected to the Stratosphere

“We have never seen something like this,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist in the Jet Nasa Propulsion Laboratory in South California.

He led a new research that examined the amount of water vapor injected with volcanoes to the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer between about 12 and 53 kilometers above the earth’s surface.

In this study, published in the Geophysics Research Letter, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent about 146 terragrams (1 terragram equal to one trillion gram) Water vapor into the earth’s stratosphere – the same as 10 percent of water already in it Atmospheric layer.

It was almost four times the amount of water vapor estimated by the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption scientist in the Philippines into the stratosphere.

Millán analyzes data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on the NASA aura satellite, which measures atmospheric gas, including water vapor and ozone.

After the Tonga volcano erupted, the MLS team began to see the reading of water vapor coming out of the charts.

“We must carefully examine all measurements in feathers to make sure they can be trusted,” Millán said.

The MLS instrument is located well to detect this water vapor hair because it observes the natural micro wave signal emitted from the Earth’s atmosphere. Measuring these signals allows MLS to “see” through obstacles such as ash clouds that can blind other instruments that measure water vapor in the stratosphere.

“MLS is the only instrument with a fairly dense coverage to capture water vapor hair as happened, and one -only that is not affected by ash released by the volcano,” Millán said.