Impact of Hunga Tonga-hunga Ha’apai Eruption on the Antarctic Polar Stratosphere

Abstract Book of the 6th World Conference on Climate Change and Global Warming

Year: 2025

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Impact of Hunga Tonga-hunga Ha’apai Eruption on the Antarctic Polar Stratosphere

Marcel Snels, Federico Serva, Luca Di Liberto, Francesco Cairo

ABSTRACT:

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hung Ha’apai submarine volcano in January 2022 was the largest volcanic eruption since the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Pinatubo ejected mostly ash and sulphur dioxide, causing a significant impact on global temperatures and atmospheric chemistry. Hunga ejected volcanic material and sulphur dioxide, although in minor quantities, but being a submarine volcano, it ejected a large amount of water vapour up to the stratosphere. Initially the water vapor plume remained confined within the tropical belt and penetrated the southern polar vortex only in December 2022. The presence of an enhanced water vapour concentration had an impact on the formation of polar stratospheric clouds and the ozone chemistry. The 2023 Antarctic ozone hole reached a maximum size of 26 million square km and results the 16th largest since 1979 according to data provided by NASA and NOAA. Recent studies claim that the ejected sulfate aerosols provided an efficient cooling effect that unexpectedly outweighed the warming effect of the water vapor, thus leading to a 0.1 K cooling of the SH. Here we present ground-based lidar observations of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) at the French-Italian Antarctic Concordia station. Anomalous observations of ice PSCs will be discussed, resulting from the impact of the Hunga eruption on stratospheric temperature and water vapour concentrations. The water vapour and temperature anomalies caused by the Hunga eruption are correlated with the unexpected observation of water-ice PSCs in June and September.

Keywords: Climate, Lidar, Ozone, Polar Stratospheric Clouds, Water Vapour