2022 Tonga volcanic eruption injected enormous water into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill ~58,000 Olympic pools

The underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on January 15, 2022, blasted an enormous plume of water vapour into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

For the unversed, Stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.

The huge amount of water vapour hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface, since water vapour traps heat, the agency said on Tuesday.

When the Tonga volcano erupted on Jan. 15, @NASA‘s Microwave Limb Sounder detected a huge amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere, enough to fill ~58K Olympic pools. This could have a small, temporary warming effect on Earth’s global average temp. pic.twitter.com/lmSyt199t3

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 2, 2022

Led by Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the researchers estimate that the Tonga volcanic eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into the stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer.

The team analyzed data from the MLS instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite, which measures atmospheric gases, including water vapour and ozone. After the Tonga volcano erupted, the MLS team started seeing water vapour readings that were off the charts.

“Volcanic eruptions rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In the 18 years that NASA has been taking measurements, only two other eruptions – the 2008 Kasatochi event in Alaska and the 2015 Calbuco eruption in Chile – sent appreciable amounts of water vapor to such high altitudes. But those were mere blips compared to the Tonga event, and the water vapor from both previous eruptions dissipated quickly,” NASA said in a statement, adding that the excess water injected by the Tonga volcano could remain in the stratosphere for several years.