New York – When Underwater volcano erupts in Tonga In January, its water eruption was massive and unusual — and scientists are still trying to understand its effects.
The volcano known as Honga Tonga – Hong HappiMillions of tons of water vapor projected high in the atmosphere, according to A The study was published Thursday in Science magazine.
Researchers estimate that the volcanic eruption increased the amount of water in the stratosphere — the second layer of the atmosphere, above the range where humans live and breathe — by about 5%.
Scientists are now trying to figure out how all this water might affect the atmosphere and whether it will warm the Earth’s surface over the next few years.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said lead author Holger Voemel, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
Big eruptions usually cool the planet. Most volcanoes emit large amounts of sulfur, which blocks the sun’s rays, said Matthew Toohy, a climate researcher at the University of Saskatchewan who was not involved in the study.
The Tonga eruption was much more dangerous: the eruption began under the ocean, so it threw a column with much more water than usual. Since water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas that traps heat, a volcanic eruption is likely to raise temperatures rather than lower them, Tohey said.
It is not clear how much warming is likely.
Karen Rosenloff, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who was not involved in the study, said she expects the effects to be limited and temporary.
“This increase could lead to a slight rise in the surface temperature for a short time,” Rosenloff said in an email.
The water vapor will remain in the upper atmosphere for a few years before entering the lower atmosphere, Tohey said. Meanwhile, Rosenloff added that excess water could also accelerate the loss of ozone from the atmosphere.
But it’s hard for scientists to say for sure, because they’ve never seen an eruption like this before.
Voemel explained that the stratosphere extends from about 7.5 miles to 31 miles above Earth and is generally very dry.
The Voemel team estimated the volcano’s plume using a set of instruments suspended from weather balloons. Usually these instruments can’t even measure stratospheric water levels because the amounts are too small, Voemel said.
Another research group monitored the explosion with an instrument on a NASA satellite. in their studiesPublished earlier this summer, they estimated that the eruption would be larger, adding about 150 million metric tons of water vapor to the stratosphere, three times the Voemel study.
Voemel acknowledged that satellite imagery could have noticed parts of the plume that balloon tools were unable to capture, making his estimate higher.
Either way, he said, the blast was in Tonga Unlike anything seen in modern historyAnd studying their consequences could provide new information about our atmosphere.