The Tonga volcano spews enough water to fill 58,000 Olympic swimming pools into the stratosphere

The violent eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga on January 15, 2022 injected an unprecedented quantity of water instantly into the stratosphere – sufficient to fill greater than 58,000 Olympic swimming swimming pools.

“We have by no means seen something prefer it,” mentioned Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist who works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

When the volcano erupted, seawater got here into direct contact with the erupting lava and was superheated, creating “explosive steam”.

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NASA scientists say the steam will linger for years, probably affecting Earth’s international common temperature. Usually, the steam takes about 2-3 years to dissipate, however the water from the January 15 eruption may take 5-10 years to evaporate.

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai “would be the first noticed volcanic eruption to impression local weather not by means of floor cooling brought on by volcanic sulfate aerosols, however quite by means of floor warming”, issued Millán’s speculation in an article.

Millán carried out a examine analyzing how a lot water vapor the volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the environment between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above the Earth’s floor.

Millán and his colleagues discovered that the Tonga volcano despatched about 146 tetragrams (1 tetragram equals one trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere. The quantity of water launched into the stratosphere is the same as 10% of the water already current within the atmospheric layer. Their analysis has been printed in Geophysical Analysis Letters.

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The eruption got here from a volcano greater than 12 miles broad. A day earlier than the large eruption, Tongan authorities reported on Fb that the volcano was in steady eruption. Within the submit, they reported that the volcano was sending a 3 mile broad column plume of ash, steam and gasoline rising 35 miles into the environment.

The researchers additionally famous how water vapor can weaken the ozone layer that protects life on Earth from the solar’s dangerous rays.

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The examine authors mentioned it was nonetheless too early to foretell the precise climatic results of the Tonga eruption. “It’s vital to proceed monitoring volcanic gases from this and future eruption to higher quantify their totally different roles in local weather,” Millán wrote.