The following is not meant to be judgmental … as Jack Webb (AKA Sgt. Friday) used to say, “just the facts, please.”
Before the other day I had never heard of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai, and had certainly not heard of the recent undersea volcanic eruption.
From Wikipedia:
Hunga Tonga and Hunga Haʻapai are the only subaerial parts of the volcano. Hunga Tonga is the eastern island, while Hunga Haʻapai is the western one. They are part of Tonga’s Haʻapai group of islands, an island arc formed at the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate subducts under the Indo-Australian Plate.
Its most recent eruption in January 2022 generated a tsunami that reached as far as the coasts of Japan and off the Americas and a volcanic plume that reached 58 km (36 mi) into the mesosphere. As of May 2022 the eruption is the largest volcanic eruption in the 21st century.
Ash from the eruption blanketed nearby islands, forcing many people to evacuate to the main island. Around 84% of Tonga’s population were impacted by ash and tsunami waves in the immediate aftermath of the eruption, and two Tongan nationals were killed.
From NASA:
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.The volcano not only injected ash into the stratosphere but also large amounts of water vapor, breaking all records for direct injection of water vapor, by a volcano or otherwise, in the satellite era. …The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano … 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 … since water vapor traps heat.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
From C&C:
Over the next year it would turn out that NASA badly underestimated the amount of water Hunga Tonga vaporized into the atmosphere. Current estimates are three times higher than the original: scientists now think it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or 40 trillion gallons, of super-heated water instantly injected into the atmosphere.
[D]ue to extreme altitude reach of the eruption, volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in only one week and dispersed nearly pole-to-pole in three months.
The observations provide evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% as compared to climatological levels. As there are no efficient sinks of water vapour in the stratosphere, this perturbation is expected to persist several years.
Here a few headlines from recent articles:
Cold the after effects of the Tonga eruption and the resultant increase in atmospheric water vapor have anything to do with this summer’s heat wave?
Likewise a headline from a recent scientific article:
Again another:
Again from C&C:
What causes boiling-hot, deep-ocean vents? Volcanic activity. Magma from the Earth’s core is heating up the water, which is venting out, raising ocean temperatures and putting even more water vapor into the atmosphere, which heats the air through greenhouse effects.
Is the combination of the relatively recent massive Tonga undersea volcanic eruption and the deep ocean vents spewing boiling hot ocean water have anything to do with warmer temperatures and warmer ocean water temperature?
Here I am trying not to be judgmental, but I just want the facts.
8/1/23