Archives par mot-clé : Tonga volcano

climate-debate

Hunga Tonga volcano: impact on record warming

by J. Vinos, July 9, 2024 in WUWT

1. Off-scale warming

Since the planet has been warming for 200 years, and our global records are even more recent, every few years a new warmest year in history is recorded. Despite all the publicity given each time it happens, it would really be news if it didn’t happen, as it did between 1998 and 2014, a period popularly known as the pause.

Figure 1. Berkeley Earth temperature anomaly

Since 1980, 13 years have broken the temperature record. So, what is so special about the 2023 record and the expected 2024 record? For starters, 2023 broke the record by the largest margin in records, 0.17°C. This may not sound like much, but if all records were by this margin, we would go from +1.5°C to +2°C in just 10 years, and reach +3°C 20 years later.

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climate and geology

The MSM Has Memory-Holed Tonga’s Warming Effects On World Temps

by E. Erickson, Aug 14, 2023 in ClimateChangeDispatch

On Jan. 15, 2022, the underwater Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the Pacific exploded. The volcano triggered tsunamis in the South Pacific and sent a massive plume of water vapor into the stratosphere.

Over the past year, scientists have increased the estimates of how much water vapor went into the stratosphere. That water vapor, every scientist agrees, warms the planet. [emphasis, links added]

Originally, scientists estimated 50 million metric tons of water went into the atmosphere.

Now, revised estimates are at 150 million metric tons, which equates to 40 trillion gallons of water injected into the stratosphere.

Over the past year, dozens of scientists have produced papers warning that the summer of 2023 and possibly into the next decade would be abnormally hot.

Scientists suggest the global temperature could increase more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In fact, that is exactly what is happening. Up until the summer heat wave, news reports noted the expected increase in temperatures due to the volcano.

But as the heat wave began, as predicted, the volcano and its water vapor disappeared from coverage.

Now, in the progressive spirit of never letting a crisis go to waste, the American and European press corpshave begun a full-court press on climate change.

Instead of the volcano, people, capitalism, and oil companies are to blame for the heat wave.

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only geology

Tonga volcano eruption among the most powerful ever observed, triggering atmospheric gravity waves that reached the edge of space

by University of Bath,  Jun 30, 2022 in ScienceDaily from Nature

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano in January 2022 was one of the most explosive volcanic events of the modern era, a new study has confirmed.

Led by researchers from the University of Bath and published today in Nature, the study combines extensive satellite data with ground-level observations to show that the eruption was unique in observed science in both its magnitude and speed, and in the range of the fast-moving gravity and atmospheric waves it created.

Following a series of smaller events beginning in December 2021, Hunga Tonga erupted on 15 January this year, producing a vertical plume that extended more than 50km (30 miles) above the surface of the earth. Heat released from water and hot ash in the plume remained the biggest source of gravity waves on earth for the next 12 hours. The eruption also produced ripple-like gravity waves that satellite observations show extended across the Pacific basin.

The eruption also triggered waves in our atmosphere that reverberated around the planet at least six times and reached close to their theoretical maximum speeds — the fastest ever seen within our atmosphere, at 320m per second or 720 miles per hour.

The fact that a single event dominated such a large region is described by the paper’s authors as unique in the observational record, and one that will help scientists improve future atmospheric weather and climate models.

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