Satellite observations and modeling of the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption
- 1Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA (scarn@mtu.edu)
- 2Department of Mineral Sciences, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution , Washington DC, USA
- 3Department of Environmental Science, American University, Washington DC, USA
- 4Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
- 5Code 614, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
- 6Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
- 7Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
- 8U.S. Geological Survey, David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, WA, USA
The 15 January 2022 eruption of the submarine Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) volcano (Tonga) ranks among the largest volcanic explosions of the satellite remote sensing era, and perhaps the last century. It shares many characteristics with the 1883 Krakatau eruption (Indonesia), including atmospheric pressure waves and tsunamis, and the phreatomagmatic interaction of magma and seawater likely played a major role in the dynamics of both events. A portion of the HTHH eruption column rose to lower mesospheric altitudes (~55 km) and the umbrella cloud extent (~500 km diameter at ~30-35 km altitude) rivalled that of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, indicative of very high mass eruption rates. However, sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions measured in the HTHH volcanic cloud (~0.4 Tg) were significantly lower than the post-Pinatubo SO2 loading (~10–15 Tg SO2), and on this basis we would expect minimal climate impacts from the HTHH event. Yet, in the aftermath of the eruption satellite observations show a persistent stratospheric aerosol layer with the characteristics of sulfate aerosol, along with a large stratospheric water vapor anomaly. At the time of writing, the origin, composition and eventual impacts of this stratospheric gas and aerosol veil are unclear. We present the preliminary results of a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the HTHH eruption, including 1D- and 3D-modeling of the eruption column coupled to a 3D atmospheric general circulation model (NASA’s GEOS-5 model), volatile mass balance considerations involving potential magmatic, seawater and atmospheric volatile and aerosol sources, and an extensive suite of satellite observations. Analysis of the HTHH eruption will provide new insight into the dynamics and atmospheric impacts of large, shallow submarine eruptions. Such eruptions have likely occurred throughout Earth’s history but have never been observed with modern instrumentation.
How to cite: Carn, S., Andrews, B., Aquila, V., Cauley, C., Colarco, P., Dufek, J., Fischer, T., Kenis, L., Krotkov, N., Li, C., Mastin, L., Newman, P., and Wallace, P.: Satellite observations and modeling of the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13583, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13583, 2022.
