On January 15th, 2022, Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, spewing tons of gas and ash into the atmosphere. According to a Wednesday report by National Public Radio, the blast contained enough water vapor – notorious for its heat-trapping abilities – to temporarily raise Earth’s temperature.
“The massive amount of water vapor is roughly 10% of the normal amount of vapor found in the stratosphere, equaling more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools,” NPR wrote.
The chemicals “came from a volcano that’s more than 12 miles wide, with a caldera sitting roughly 500 feet below sea level. One day earlier, Tongan officials reported the volcano was in a continuous eruption, sending a 3-mile-wide plume of steam and ash into the sky. Then the big blast came, sending ash, gases and vapor as high as 35 miles — a record in the satellite era — into the atmosphere,” per NPR.
In a July paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists discovered that Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai “may be the first volcanic eruption observed to impact climate not through surface cooling caused by volcanic sulfate aerosols, but rather through surface warming.”
Water vapor lingers in the air, which contributes to its ability to retain heat.
“It normally takes around 2-3 years for sulfate aerosols from volcanoes to fall out of the stratosphere. But the water from the Jan. 15 eruption could take 5-10 years to fully dissipate,” NPR explained.
I initially wondered if the extra water could be responsible for the extraordinary wet spring we had this year. But I read elsewhere that the volcano put the water in the stratosphere and it will take a couple years for the water to move down into the troposphere and become rain.
Its sounds as if, for the next few years, we can expect warmer than normal weather. Don’t let the climate alarmist blame it on fossil fuels. Insist Mother Nature gets the appropriate credit.
