The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai hydration of the stratosphere
- 1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
- 2Pasadena, California, USA 2 NorthWest Research Associates, Socorro, New Mexico, USA
- 3New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, New Mexico, USA
- 4School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai, a submarine volcano in the South Pacific, reached an eruption climax on 15 January 2022. The blast sent a plume of ash well into the stratosphere, triggered tsunami alerts across the world, and caused ionospheric disturbances. A few hours after the violent eruption, the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) measured enhanced values of water vapor at altitudes as high as 50 km - near the stratopause.
On the following days, as the plume dispersed, several MLS chemical species, including H2O and SO2, displayed elevated values, far exceeding any previous values in the 18-year record. In this presentation we discuss the validity of these measurements, the stratospheric evolution of the SO2 and H2O plumes, and, lastly, the implications of the large-scale hydration of the stratosphere by the eruption.
How to cite: Millán, L., Froidevaux, L., Manney, G., Lambert, A., Livesey, N., Pumphrey, H., Read, W., Santee, M., Schwartz, M., Su, H., Werner, F., and Wu, L.: The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai hydration of the stratosphere, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13601, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13601, 2022.
