It was and still is a very big deal. Some prior posts below.
From The Conversation, May 29:
Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Hunga Tonga for short) erupted on January 15 2022 in the Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. It created a tsunami which triggered warnings across the entire Pacific basin, and sent sound waves around the globe multiple times.
A new study published in the Journal of Climate explores the climate impacts of this eruption.
Our findings show the volcano can explain last year’s extraordinarily large ozone hole, as well as the much wetter than expected summer of 2024.
The eruption could have lingering effects on our winter weather for years to come.
A cooling smoke cloudHunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (Hunga Tonga for short) erupted on January 15 2022 in the Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. It created a tsunami which triggered warnings across the entire Pacific basin, and sent sound waves around the globe multiple times.
A new study published in the Journal of Climate explores the climate impacts of this eruption.
Our findings show the volcano can explain last year’s extraordinarily large ozone hole, as well as the much wetter than expected summer of 2024.
The eruption could have lingering effects on our winter weather for years to come.
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Usually, the smoke of a volcano – and in particular the sulphur dioxide contained inside the smoke cloud – ultimately leads to a cooling of Earth’s surface for a short period.This is because the sulphur dioxide transforms into sulphate aerosols, which send sunlight back into space before it reaches the surface. This shading effect means the surface cools down for a while, until the sulphate falls back down to the surface or gets rained out.
This is not what happened for Hunga Tonga.
Because it was an underwater volcano, Hunga Tonga produced little smoke, but a lot of water vapour: 100–150 million tonnes, or the equivalent of 60,000 Olympic swimming pools. The enormous heat of the eruption transformed huge amounts of sea water into steam, which then shot high into the atmosphere with the force of the eruption.
All that water ended up in the stratosphere: a layer of the atmosphere between about 15 and 40 kilometres above the surface, which produces neither clouds nor rain because it is too dry.
Water vapour in the stratosphere has two main effects. One, it helps in the chemical reactions which destroy the ozone layer, and two, it is a very potent greenhouse gas.
There is no precedent in our observations of volcanic eruptions to know what all that water would do to our climate, and for how long. This is because the only way to measure water vapour in the entire stratosphere is via satellites. These only exist since 1979, and there hasn’t been an eruption similar to Hunga Tonga in that time.
Follow the vapour
Experts in stratospheric science around the world started examining satellite observations from the first day of the eruption. Some studies focused on the more traditional effects of volcanic eruptions, such as the amount of sulphate aerosols and their evolution after the eruption, some concentrated on the possible effects of the water vapour, and some included both.But nobody really knew how the water vapour in the stratosphere would behave. How long will it remain in the stratosphere? Where will it go? And, most importantly, what does this mean for the climate while the water vapour is still there?
Those were exactly the questions we set off to answer....
....MUCH MORE
Ahead Of A Possible Climate Emergency Declaration, Some Interesting Phenomena
The Tonga volcano eruption in January 2022 wasn't just big, it was also explosive. Probably the largest natural explosion in the last hundred years And because it was underwater, when it blew it injected a huge amount of water, which quickly became water vapor, into the very top of the atmosphere.
Water vapor is the most abundant of all the greenhouse gasses.
First up, Ars Technica with the initial estimate of the size of the injection, September 22, 2022:
Hunga Tonga eruption put over 50B kilograms of water into the stratosphere
New study shows eruption plume circled the globe multiple times in the stratosphere.That number was stale when it was published, having been superseded a month earlier by a figure triple the earlier estimate. From NASA, Aug 2, 2022
Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere....
"Climate change is driving higher temperatures. Not a volcanic eruption"
