Massive eruption in Tonga

[bjdeming]

 

[bjdeming]

Someone credible finally "went there" in my media feeds. I don't know enough of any of the relevant scientific fields to say yes, no, or maybe, but do look forward to the AGU discussions and findings that will be published from this fall's meeting on the topic:



Meanwhile, the sky glow is still amazing. My room's windows face north, more or less, and sunset colors on these clear summer evenings extend there and well into the eastern sky, making it much harder to see the "belt of Venus" (backscatter) that usually is so dramatic and pretty.

Again, I'm not knowledgeable, but common sense suggests that all that diffuse light, etc., must affect climate and, to some extent perhaps, weather.

In Oppenheimer's Eruptions That Shook The World is an interesting discussion of the effects of Pinatubo's heavy sulfur load farther down in the stratosphere. He notes that it followed the general "summer cooling/winter warming" pattern but with surprising regional variations.

Heavy humidization of the upper stratosphere is something else, something brand new in the instrumental age.

 

[bjdeming]

I haven't kept documenting it but keep an eye on the sky for glow around sunset every now and then and noticed a few weeks ago that the whole sky seems to glow now, subtly perhaps but enough to make the typical backscattering "belt of Venus" effect much harder to see.

 

[bjdeming]

Another paper out.

“This eruption put us in uncharted territory,” said Ross Salawitch, professor at the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and co-author of the study. “We’ve never seen, in the history of satellite records, this much water vapor injected into the atmosphere and our paper is the first that looks at the downstream consequences over broad regions of both hemispheres in the months following the eruption using satellite data and a global model.”

--Source

 

[bjdeming]

Just a couple of things encountered while working up a chapter on this for the Vella project:

1. Information on the December 2023 AGU event is here.

2. PBS released its NOVA video on the January 15th eruption. If you've already seen it, then you know it starts off with images taken by some people who were safely but not too far from the big event, and then has lots of video from that day on Tonga.

This was actually taken the day before by Tongan geologists, who thought such massive energy release was the max for the volcano (so little is known about submarine volcanoes):



The blast next day was 70x as intense.

I was just reading this description by Yuen et al. and got a kick over the contrast between those images in the NOVA video and the dry academic discussion of their model (which is different from the two described in the NOVA video and just as plausible -- AFAIK, research is still ongoing on the cause):

...
We surmise that breaching of the magma chamber occurred at depth at 0402±1UTC, after which a bubbly, gas-laden and fragmenting magma made its way towards the surface. The exponential increase in eruption intensity at 0408 UTC could reflect the transition from surtseyan to subplinian activity, with the change to phreatoplinian activity marked by intense explosions beginning at 0414 ± 2 UTC and peaking at 0429 ± 2 UTC—the likely source of the incredibly large Lamb waves, tsunami, ground-coupled airwaves, meteo-tsunami, and colossal amounts of volcanic lightning.

Based on these first-order observations, peak volumetric discharge and mass flow rates of the volcanic plume are ∼9 × 105 m3/s and 1.3 × 109 kg/s, respectively, given a mean column density of 1500 kg/m3 typical of phreatoplinian volcanic columns (e.g., Sparks et al., 1997). Integration of the plume height time series reconstructed from imagery gives a preliminary total eruptive volume of 1.9 km3, corresponding to an eruptive mass of ∼2 850 Tg. Explosive activity was aided by the relatively high concentration (∼5 wt.% H2O) of juvenile (magmatic) H2O dissolved in the pre-eruptive melt, assuming that pre-eruptive wt.% H2O is consistent with eruptive products from 2009 to 2014–2015 (Colombier et al., 2018; Brenna et al., 2022), which is a reasonable preliminary approximation. A high magmatic volatile content presumably increased the depth in the volcanic conduit at which magma fragmentation occurred, supercharging the later and shallower exchange of heat between already-fragmented magma and seawater, and affording the rapid flashing to steam with attendant enormous increase in volume. The conversion of pressure-volume work associated with the expansion to kinetic energy and vertically-directed momentum coupled to enhanced plume buoyancy enabled the vigorous plume to develop with associated atmospheric shock waves. As a crude estimate, if the mass fraction of seawater constituted 15% of the eruptive product, then the flashing of seawater from liquid to steam contributes ∼2 300 km3 of volume expansion (Haar et al., 1984) when heated to magmatic temperatures. Indeed, a unique aspect of the HTHH eruption was the ingress of seawater (external, not magmatic water) and its phase change to a supercritical fluid. The PV work done pushing the atmosphere away from the eruptive vent constitutes an approximate mechanical energy of ∼2 × 1017 J, which is in relatively good agreement with preliminary blast energies associated with atmospheric shock waves of 4–18 MT...

Just for reference, the highest output of Iceland's Sundhnuk eruptions thus far has been around 300 m/s.

 

[bjdeming]

[Curiosity on X: "The biggest volcanic eruption ever seen from space, captured by two different satellites. https://t.co/T5gJet6qiM" /

 

[bjdeming]

One of the advantages of being retired (and, to be honest, not having much of a social life ) is the freedom to get up and go to bed whenever you want rather than being a clock slave. The thrill wears off after a while but I'm still enjoying it some and, just now, happened to glance out the window to see how dawn is coming along.

And dawn apparently is coming to the NNE, still about 45° from where I know the sun will actually come up in about an hour or so.

IOW, this layperson believes her eyes and thinks that, almost 2-1/2 years after the blast, stratospheric injected water content is still high enough to have an effect on incoming sunlight, at least near the terminator's dark side (I have checked horizon glow around sunset a few times over the last six months or so and noticed that the most intense glow doesn't extend as far north and south as it did before).

And I can say it because I'm a nobody without a career to protect. There isn't much comment on it, or on all the peculiar weather since the eruption, from knowledgeable people -- instead, everyone stays pretty much in line and avoids the dreaded "denialist" career-killing label.

Personally, I don't think much of any argument that relies on calling those who disagree with it names, and "denialist" is not a good label anyway -- anyone who notices the lack of mile-high glacial fronts at temperate latitudes these days is not going to deny that climate change is a thing.

What the label does is prevent intelligent questions to be raised, like "Why should we want another ice age?" or "What if we're just moving Earth's average temperature back towards its balmier setting that worked well for life over millions of years, even after the Oligocene "icehouse" set in -- right up to about 2.5 million years ago?".

Sorry for the rant and I won't subsequently get drawn into "climate change" flame wars.

It's just so frustrating to see experts routine chalk up things to anthropogenic blunders rather than raise the possibility that maybe, just maybe, hydrating the planet's entire upper stratosphere by ~10% might have had something to do with it.

It is possible to point to the unusual effects while leaving the door open to all potential causes, at least when you're already at the ladder's top.

But I doubt that anything about the Hunga Tonga 2022 blast will be included in any rational debates any time soon.

Its atmospheric effects are invisible to us because, unlike after Krakatoa 1883 (which apparently had a much bigger sulfur dioxide component), there haven't been undeniable global optical effects.

Things should dry out up there again in another year or two, according to reports I've read. In the meantime, I'll just look out the window every now and then, in the hour before dawn, and watch this particular inconvenient truth slowly fade away

 

[Sawmaster]

I'm semi-reired, and at almost 65 my weekend sleep is a series of naps as I feel like it. I don't get things done but I'm happy with the comfort. What ticks me off most is that when you mention "climate change" a large portion of people think you said "global warming due to man-made factors" which makes holding an intelligent conversation about the subject rather impossible. It seems to me the only people speaking freely now are mostly extremists with crazy ideas. Maybe moer level-headed people are just tired of trying...

But anyway, what understanding of Tonga I have came from here,and it's nice to hear from clear-thinking people about the subject. Thanks!

 

[bjdeming]

level-headed people are just tired of trying...

Gotta think positive: Maybe the young authors of new paradigms, whatever those might be, are still feeling their way just now -- and in the meantime, like everyone else, playing the time-honored game of "Cheat the Prophet."

While all the while oblivious Earth spins away, outside the lab door, with more surprises hidden away in its complex sleeves to test the next generation of humans who dare to try and understand it.

(Thank you, too.)

 

[bjdeming]

Came across this just now while looking up something else, and FWIW I noticed this past week that the sunset glow still extends farther than usual though it doesn't seem quite as intense (and at no time did it approach Pinatubo or Krakatoa sulfate-induced afterglows):

The 2022 Hunga eruption injected an unprecedented amount of water vapor directly into the very dry stratosphere. This abrupt increase in water vapor from Hunga occurred at a time when the stratosphere was already gradually becoming moister. Using measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on NASA's Aura satellite, we show that stratospheric water vapor remained elevated, essentially unchanged, from the time of the eruption until at least early 2024. MLS data further reveal that, in 2023, one of the main mechanisms for drying the stratosphere—permanent removal of water vapor by formation and settling of ice polar stratospheric cloud particles over Antarctica—was substantially more effective than usual, boosted by the excess water vapor from Hunga. Projections indicate that the return to moisture levels that would have been expected in the absence of the eruption depends on how humid the stratosphere continues to get. Considering the ongoing moistening trend and the water vapor injected by Hunga, the stratosphere could remain unusually humid for a considerable period.

That's bad news if the extreme weather events of the past few years are in some way associated with that humidification -- a hypothesis only this layperson seems to be interested in.

 

[bjdeming]

Just came across this tonight while working up a blog post -- it does support the idea that the pre-dawn "dawn" and other optical effects I saw here at 44.5° N in August 2022 could have been from the hydrated stratospheric plume, which is what they're talking about here, especially since it was so subtle:

...The MLS observations show that within 5 months of the eruption, the hydrated plumes have spread in both directions from 65° S to 35° N but mostly within the bulk plume layer (20–30 km)...

 

[Atlantic]

This got me thinking... if the water vapor content in the atmosphere rose in 2023 after the Tonga eruption of January 15th, 2022... 2023 ended up being a very significant year in the tropics.

• Tropical Cyclone Freddy lasted from February 5th, 2023 to March 14th, 2023. Freddy was the longest-lasting TC on record.
• Tropical Cyclone Freddy produced the most ACE of any TC on record globally, with 87.01 ACE.
• Super Typhoon Doksuri was a very damaging typhoon in China, becoming one of the costliest storms on record in the Western Pacific.
• Super Typhoon Mawar became the strongest typhoon in May on record, surpassing Super Typhoon Damrey from 2000, with maximum winds of 190 mph
• Hurricane Dora became the longest-lasting Category 4 on record, and crossed all three North Pacific basins (Eastern Pacific, Central Pacific and Western Pacific)
• Hurricane Jova quickly intensified into a Category 5, one of the fastest intensifcations on record in the Eastern Pacific.
• Hurricane Lee quickly intensified into a Category 5 in the Atlantic basin within a day after of the Eastern Pacific's Jova did the same.
• The 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season was the most active season on record with El Nino conditions present, with 20 named storms.
• October in the Eastern Pacific was very active, partly due to the El Nino present.
• Two Major Hurricanes struck Mexico in October: First was Hurricane Lidia with 140 mph winds. Then was Hurricane Otis, a very signficant storm as it was the strongest landfalling hurricane in Mexico from the Eastern Pacific on record with 160 mph winds.
• The North Indian Ocean was very active by North Indian Ocean terms with 8 TCs forming during the season. There was two occurences on duel TCs active in the basin: Biparjoy in the Arabian Sea and 03B in the Bay of Bengal in June, and Tej in the Arabian Sea and Hamoon in the Bay of Bengal in October.
• Biparjoy in the North Indian Ocean was one of the longest lasting TCs on record for the basin, due to the basins' small size. Biparjoy also produced the highest ACE on record for the North Indian Ocean from one storm.
• Operationally every basin produced a Category 5 SSHWS TC (Before JTWC 2023-24 reanalysis downgraded Kevin to 135 kts)
• Severe Tropical Cyclone Lola was the second known pre-season Category 4 SSHWS-equivent on record for the South Pacific and one of the strongest off-season TCs in the South Pacific on record.
• Hurricane Tammy was one of the latest hurricanes on record for the Tropical Atlantic (MDR), becoming a hurricane on October 20th while approaching the Leeward Islands.
• Despite an El Nino, the 2023 Pacific Typhoon Season was one of the least active of record, producing 17 named storms (including Eastern Pacific's Dora) This was likely due to pressure patterns not really matching, warm above average anomalies near Japan and a -PDO.
• The Atlantic basin produced two TCs in the Tropical Atlantic in June (Tropical Storm Bret and Tropical Storm Cindy). This was the first time on record that more than one storm formed in the Tropical Atlantic in June. It was also the first time on record with concurrently active storms in Tropical Atlantic in June and before August on record.
• Hurricane Don was not a very strong storm; but it lasted 10 days in the middle of July, one of the longest lasting July storms on record.
• Four TCs formed within less than 72 hours in the Atlantic Basin from August 19th, 2023 to August 21st, 2023 (Gert, Emily, Franklin and Harold), the short time period that four TCs formed on record.
• Hurricane Adrian was the latest forming first TC in the Eastern Pacific on record (until the following year when Tropical Storm Aletta formed onn July 4th)
• Tropical Storm Ramon was the second latest forming TC in the Eastern Pacific on record, becoming a Tropical Depression on November 21st and becoming named on November 25th.
• Severe Tropical Cyclone Judy and Severe Tropical Cyclone Kevin struck Vanuatu within 48 hours, an interesting turn of events.
• Severe Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle formed in the Australian Region, but it was the costliest TC on record in an entire other basin: The South Pacific.
• Intense Tropical Cyclone Fabien was the latest Cat 3+ SSHWS-equivelent storm on record in the Southern Indian Ocean.

 

[Atlantic]

How far above the horizon does the sunset glow usually show without a volcanic eruption?

 

[bjdeming]

It varies a lot with atmospheric conditions. What still seems unusual to me, though to a somewhat lesser intensity, is the broad N-S extent, as well as the increased diffuseness of the glow.

 

[bjdeming]

This got me thinking... if the water vapor content in the atmosphere rose in 2023 after the Tonga eruption of January 15th, 2022... 2023 ended up being a very significant year in the tropics.

Things have been extreme in some other ways, too.

Drawing a Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai connection appears tricky for experts, though, and this layperson can barely follow a few basics.

For instance:

1. The eruption was unusual in a few ways. The water injection was roughly a 10% increase in total stratospheric hydration -- the equivalent of ten minutes of Amazon River peak flow. The injection altitude was high, which enabled rapid initial circumglobal transit. Very little sulfur gas was injected, but the water injection helped almost all of it to convert to sulfate aerosol, which also traveled rapidly around the world and stayed up there somewhat longer than usual because of the small droplet size (references available). Water will also be present for a while since it apparently exits the stratosphere mostly through stratospheric polar clouds and some return through the tropopause at certain points in the Brewer-Dobson circulation.

2. Water also accelerated ozone loss, but that's complex, per this NASA study, and it varies by altitude. I happened to check an expert source tonight while working up a blog post, and even they only mention that the HTHH eruption might have had an effect on Antarctica's ozone hole; they say that no one factor is responsible for changes there.

Of note, balloon obs downwind of the plume immediately after the eruption detected a 5% drop in ozone over the tropical Pacific and Indian Ocean in the first week, but the speed was the surprise there. Some eruptions do that much or even more in the first year or two.

3. Did it heat or cool the planet? Just a couple of examples of papers on this: this team says in their 2024 paper that persistent water vapor dominates net warming effect at the top of the stratosphere, increasing global mean surface temp by 1.5° C (2.7° F), which is quite a bit.

This 2025 paper, OTOH, argues that it cooled the Southern Hemisphere a little bit.

++++++

It was a very unusual eruption, and too, my general impression is that we don't know very much about the stratosphere and its influence on the troposphere.

My layperson intuition -- which is of almost nil value -- is that the extreme weather events since HTHH erupted very strongly suggest such an influence, and not a minor one, either. But figuring it out might require some outside-the-box thinking by our best and brightest.