Discovery: Tonga's eruption injected so much water into Earth’s atmosphere that it could weaken the ozone layer

 The volcanic eruption that occurred in the Pacific Ocean island of Tonga in January 2022 was huge, and impacts continue to be found. Here's the latest one from LiveScience.

(image: The GOES-17 satellite captured images of an umbrella cloud generated by the underwater eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano on Jan. 15, 2022.   (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens using GOES imagery courtesy of NOAA and NESDIS))

Tonga's eruption injected so much water into Earth’s atmosphere that it could weaken the ozone layer

By Harry Baker LIVE SCIENCE Aug 2, 2022 The atmospheric water vapor could also contribute to global warming.

When an underwater volcano in Tonga erupted in January, it belched out more than ash and volcanic gases; it also spewed 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools' worth of water vapor into Earth's atmosphere, a new study finds.

This water vapor could end up being the most destructive part of the volcano's eruption because it could potentially exacerbate global warming and deplete the ozone layer, according to the study.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it became the most powerful explosion on Earth in more than 30 years, with an equivalent force of 100 Hiroshima bombs. The explosion sent shock waves around the planet, causing the atmosphere to ring like a bell and generating tsunamis that battered nearby coasts. A plume of ash and dust reached higher into the atmosphere than any other eruption on record and triggered more than 590,000 lightning strikes in three days.

In the new study, researchers used data collected by NASA's Aura satellite to assess the amount of water that was thrust into the stratosphere, the second layer in Earth's atmosphere, which extends from 4 to 12 miles (6 to 20 kilometers) up to 31 miles (50 km) above the planet's surface. The results revealed that 160,900 tons (146,000 metric tons) of additional water vapor had entered the stratosphere since the volcano erupted, reaching a maximum altitude of 33 miles (53 km), which is in the mesosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends from the top of the stratosphere to an altitude of 53 miles (85 km).

This makes it the largest and highest injection of water into the stratosphere since satellites began taking measurements.

It is not totally surprising that the Tonga eruption injected a large amount of water vapor into the atmosphere, considering the explosion ignited around 492 feet (150 meters) below the ocean's surface, the researchers said. When the volcano erupted, seawater that came into contact with erupting magma was rapidly superheated, which resulted in large amounts of "explosive steam," they wrote. This is one of the main reasons the explosion was so powerful. However, this is the first time the amount of water has been accurately measured, and it turned out to be much more than scientists had expected. FULL STORY: