Posted on 07/31/2023 10:26:52 AM PDT by grundle
Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere
The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface.
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.
In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.
Millán analyzed data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite, which measures atmospheric gases, including water vapor and ozone. After the Tonga volcano erupted, the MLS team started seeing water vapor readings that were off the charts. “We had to carefully inspect all the measurements in the plume to make sure they were trustworthy,” said Millán.
A Lasting Impression
Volcanic eruptions rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In the 18 years that NASA has been taking measurements, only two other eruptions – the 2008 Kasatochi event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – sent appreciable amounts of water vapor to such high altitudes. But those were mere blips compared to the Tonga event, and the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly. The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano, on the other hand, could remain in the stratosphere for several years.
This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures. Massive volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount Pinatubo typically cool Earth’s surface by ejecting gases, dust, and ash that reflect sunlight back into space. In contrast, the Tonga volcano didn’t inject large amounts of aerosols into the stratosphere, and the huge amounts of water vapor from the eruption may have a small, temporary warming effect, since water vapor traps heat. The effect would dissipate when the extra water vapor cycles out of the stratosphere and would not be enough to noticeably exacerbate climate change effects.
The sheer amount of water injected into the stratosphere was likely only possible because the underwater volcano’s caldera – a basin-shaped depression usually formed after magma erupts or drains from a shallow chamber beneath the volcano – was at just the right depth in the ocean: about 490 feet (150 meters) down. Any shallower, and there wouldn’t have been enough seawater superheated by the erupting magma to account for the stratospheric water vapor values Millán and his colleagues saw. Any deeper, and the immense pressures in the ocean’s depths could have muted the eruption.
The MLS instrument was well situated to detect this water vapor plume because it observes natural microwave signals emitted from Earth’s atmosphere. Measuring these signals enables MLS to “see” through obstacles like ash clouds that can blind other instruments measuring water vapor in the stratosphere. “MLS was the only instrument with dense enough coverage to capture the water vapor plume as it happened, and the only one that wasn’t affected by the ash that the volcano released,” said Millán.
The MLS instrument was designed and built by JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Aura mission.
Yes, but...
NASA and the EURO Space Agency agree that this underwater eruption added from 10% to 30% of water vapor, which holds heat.
Sounds like a dramatic escalation.
"... could remain ..."
Oh No! There is a possibility water vapor will remain in the air! This has never happened before in Human history! It will never come down! NEVER!
... unless it rains.
There are probably 58.000 swimming pools in Hollywood
“58,000 Olympic sized swimming pools sounds literally like a drop in the bucket;”
Considering there is over 660,430 gallons in a single Olympic sized pool, that would mean roughly 38,304,940,000 gallons of water(multiply the gallons x 58,000).
Now convert that to water vapor. It’s easily trillions of cubic feet of vapor that was put into the atmosphere.
It obviously “doesn’t fit the narrative..” These people from Kaiser Klaus, his Henchdork Yuval Hairball Harari, His Daughter Prinzessin Schwab, and everyone else hell bent on murdering “Billions of “Nutzlose Esser” will be exposed one way or another.. maybe only after millions die from the next Wuhan Whooping Gleep which will kill the vaccinated.
Given that the surface area of Earth is about 197 million square miles (510 million square kilometers), there’s around 37.5 million-billion gallons of water in the atmosphere, Fabry said. If all of this mass were to fall at once, it would raise the global ocean level by about 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters), he added.https://www.livescience.com/how-much-water-earth-atmosphere
What do you think?
Thanks for the feed back.
And if you go and look at the temperatures after previous eruptions of the same volcano you will see a hotter than average year(s).
This article is complete BS. The water vapor would form more clouds which would actually COOL the earth. FYI, the earth ALMOST ALWAYS COOLS after a significant volcanic eruption, it does not warm.
Oddly enough it will cool the stratosphere in the winter leading to stronger polar vortexes for a few years—possibly.
According to search.
I subscribe to WX Bell, Joe admits when he is wrong, but that is not often. I have been following his theory on seismic activity as a contributor to the increase in sea surface temperatures.
I sent this article to Joe because I know he is a cantankerous weatherman and outside the normal clique on global warming. Joe has been into weather from the beginning, having grown up in a household with a weatherman father. He is as good a weatherman as you will find in my book.
“Did humans cause the eruption?”
Yeah, probably from someone eating too much at Chipotle.
Tonga is like a fart when compared to Tambora shooting its wad in 1815 causing real climate change into 1816.
Yeah, sound about right.
If the polar ice caps and all the glaciers melted, combined with that 1.5 inches, mean sea level will probably only rise a foot.
Because IF any of the econut fear mongering about rising sea levels were true, then why are banks still financing ocean front properties with 30 year mortgages? Why are the rich buying up huge amounts of ocean front properties if it’s all going to be under water in 10 to 20 years?
It’s all a scam, it’s always been a scam, and it’s funded not only by foreign actors such as China and Russia, but by domestic malcontents such as george soros, bill gates, and others who hate this country.
I agree, CO2 is a greenhouse gas in the sense that greenhouses add CO2 to increase plant growth.
Does CO2 trap energy, keeping it from escaping earth? I don’t know that anyone has tested that hypothesis. At .04% of the atmosphere, it does not seem likely.
Decades ago, I read that clouds reflect sunlight into space and thereby cool the world. That makes more sense to me. Clouds were presented as part of a negative feedback loop, that moderated Earth’s temperatures.
As oceans warm, clouds form. As we all know from experience, clouds cool the earth below (nice to have shade). Also clouds reflect sunlight into space. If oceans get warmer, we get more clouds and cooling. If the oceans cool, we get fewer clouds and more direct sunlight. I don’t hear about this anymore. I know warmists see no use for the argument, even if valid. However, I’d like to see this addressed from time to time by honest, albeit poorly funded, researchers.
One might think that volcanoes, forest fires, and other hot events might lead to warming. Am I wrong?
“The dims will want to go back to human offerings to volcanoes, I guess.”
One virgin a year would be less costly, in terms of human lives, that our current obsession with CO2.
Anyway, I learned about photosynthesis 50 years ago in sixth grade science class. Apparently most STEM classes are extinct.
“Will it be raining fish?”
I prefer raining men...Hallelujah!
And from HungaTonga I think it can happen! :)
So, let’s completely cancel all capitalism, right?
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