New study disputes Hunga Tonga volcano’s role in 2023-24 global warm-up

Hunga Tonga eruption

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The plot thickens, since our recent post: Hunga Tonga volcano – the stratosphere heating controversy. Javier Vinos argued (re. the sudden warming): ‘any other candidate should have to demonstrate its ability to act abruptly with such magnitude before being seriously considered.’ In this new study ‘analysis revealed that the eruption resulted in more energy leaving the climate system than entering it, thereby inducing the slight cooling effect’. The question of the ‘unaccounted for’ heat remains, with this paper trying to steer the discussion back to greenhouse gases, boosted by a pinch of El Niño. The snag there is that the ‘extra’ warming started before the El Niño, and no unusual spike in so-called greenhouse gases at that time has been reported, as far as we know.
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New research from a collaborative team featuring Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist Dr. Andrew Dessler is exploring the climate impact of the 2022 Hunga Tonga volcano eruption and challenging existing assumptions about its effects in the process, sayssays EurekAlert.

The remarkable two-day event, which occurred in mid-January 2022, injected vast amounts of volcanic aerosols and water vapor into the atmosphere. Historically, large volcanic eruptions like Tambora in 1815 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 have led to significant cooling effects on the global climate by blocking sunlight with their aerosols.

However, Hunga Tonga’s eruption presented a unique scenario: As a submarine volcano, it introduced an unprecedented amount of water vapor into the stratosphere, increasing total stratospheric water content by about 10%.

Because water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, Dessler says there was initial speculation that it might account for the extreme global warmth in 2023 and 2024.

Instead, the results of the team’s research, published Wednesday (July 24) in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, reveal the opposite: The eruption actually contributed to cooling the Earth, similar to other major volcanic events.
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“Our paper pours cold water on the explanation that the eruption caused the extreme warmth of 2023 and 2024,” Dessler explained. “Instead, we need to focus primarily on greenhouse gases from human activities as the main cause of the warming, with a big assist from the ongoing El Niño.”

Full article here.
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Image: Hunga Tonga eruption, 2022