The eruption of the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Sa’apai volcano caused not only several devastating tsunamis, but also more far-reaching changes on the planet that people around the world will notice. A new study says so. The water vapor sent by the eruption into the stratosphere, located up to fifty kilometers above the earth’s surface, will result in short-term higher temperatures.
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Fifty-eight thousand pools
The US agency estimated that the eruption spewed enough water into the atmosphere to fill almost 60,000 Olympic swimming pools. More precisely, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters was at 146 teragrams of water, which is equal to ten percent of the water already in the atmosphere.
Scientists have come up with new details about the eruption of the Tonga volcano. Their findings are terrifying
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said study author and atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Luis Millán. The scientists had to carefully check all the measurements to make sure the data was really trustworthy.
Server CNN adds that the detection was made by the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), which is located on NASA’s Aura satellite. The probe started already in 2004 and its task is to measure water vapor, ozone and other gases in the atmosphere. According to the scientist, the MLS was the only instrument that was able to capture a plume of water vapor during the eruption and at the same time was not affected by the ejected ash.
Higher temperatures and damage to the ozone layer
Normally, strong volcanic eruptions, such as the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, tend to cool the temperature of the Earth’s surface. Everything that a volcano spews out, i.e. gas, dust and ash, reflects sunlight into space. However, the eruption of the Tonga volcano was different. According to scientists, the huge amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can, on the contrary, trap heat, which will result in higher temperatures. In addition, excess steam in the atmosphere can last for years.
Hidden threat: dangerous volcanoes lurk under the sea, they can kill millions of people
But experts expect that the effect of the water vapor will be small and will disappear as the vapor itself diminishes. Server NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory he adds that the excess water vapor could also promote chemical reactions that temporarily damage the ozone layer.
Scientists see the cause of the large amount of water vapor ejected into the atmosphere in the one hundred and fifty meter depth of the volcano’s caldera below sea level. If the crater were deeper, the ocean would dampen the eruption, and conversely, the smaller amount of heated water would not correspond to what reached the stratosphere.
Footage of the explosion along with its effects:
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Source: Youtube
Only Krakatoa can match it
The underwater eruption of a volcano in the Tonga archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean has left six dead and nineteen injured. It caused a series of tsunamis from Fiji and Tonga to New Zealand, Japan or Peru. She also launched a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. NASA found that the blast was a hundred times stronger than an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In recent centuries, only the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano almost one hundred and forty years ago can compete with the induced atmospheric disturbances. One of the deadliest volcanic events claimed thirty-six thousand lives, seventy percent of the island and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed, and the sound wave circled the Earth seven times.
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