Volcanic Winter
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https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere/ Take a look at this article, it touches on various factors of what HTHH was extremely unique. There is no direct analogue in historic times, and an eruption with water vapor was the constituent pollutant will not exactly leave major sulfate and tephra deposits in Greenland / Antarctic ice cores, so they would be difficult to detect in the recent geologic past. We know HTHH had a similar event of a similar scale about a thousand years ago from analysis of the caldera itself. Tofua is another similar system with a similar magma composition , but the conduit and caldera is much more established on land and wouldn’t necessarily erupt the same way were it to have another climactic event. It’s really the combination of specifics that made HTHH unique, especially the intensity. Almost VEI 6 level of erupted volume mainly erupted within two hours… that’s absolutely extreme. It’s also the intensity of the main blast itself, a true natural nuke. It generated a meteo tsunami and pressure wave not seen since Krakatau, which as I mentioned isn’t a perfect analogue as it leaned much closer toward a magma rich highly sulfurous eruption. Many geologists / volcanologists I follow discussed in the aftermath how this would further the field. Very likely we’re blind to analogue events in the geologic record for some of the reasons I touched on, which means we don’t really know the recurrence. Also volcanic winter is something of a misnomer anyway. Usually summer temps are most impacted, such as “the year Without a summer” after Tambora. Obviously a volcanic disturbed winter isn’t a warm one, but the largest departures are often in the summer. Lot of ground to cover to give a satisfactory answer but I hope at least I was able to give you something.
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On the volcanic front, there’s a little known but large and infrequently active bimodal rhyolitic volcano in the East African Rift undergoing a notably large intrusion at the moment - Fentale. The unrest is reaching levels that definitely crosses into “concerning” territory and I believe there are already evacuations in place for locals. Based on the size and nature of the intrusion we’re likely looking at significant explosive event if an eruption were to occur (which of course is never a guarantee until it’s happening). This volcano has only one known eruption in the Holocene; an effusive event in 1810 on its flanks and part of the caldera floor. Hence its bimodal nature. However this volcano has a large caldera from major eruptions in the distant past, and data has suggested this current intrusion is likely to be rhyolite. At this system that would likely be its explosive tendencies kicking into gear. A long dormant rhyolitic (evolved, sticky, potentially highly explosive magma) volcano waking up in Africa (a place that has had intense volcanism throughout the recent geologic past, but lesser known and less studied today) is something to seriously pay attention to. https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/fantale/news/255487/Fantale-volcano-Ethiopia-earthquakes-ground-cracks-suggest-magma-intrusion-precursors-of-new-eruptio.html https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=221190 East Africa has a large amount of exotic and majorly powerful volcanoes. There’s an argument that the world’s next flood basalt (monstrously enormous and millennia long mantle fed eruptions responsible for some of the worst climate excursions and extinctions in earth’s history, the last was the Colombia River Basalts 16mya) will transpire under the Virunga plateau containing Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira. And there’s quite a few massive calderas from ancient VEI 7 sized blasts including the famous Ngorongoro Crater. -
Fair, this was newer than many of the other papers however, of the ones I’ve personally read at least. There’s always variance with this sort of thing, and HTHH was very far from both conventionality and ease of measurement. It’s the first observed eruption of its type in modern history. Krakatau had some similarities but was ultimately 3x larger and fully magmatic, whereas this was more of a “super surtseyan” or phreatoplinian event. Krakatau destroyed its magmatic system and put a whole lot of fragmented rock and ash into the sky, HTHH blasted the ocean to the heavens. My point is the discrepancies, differing takes and opinions, and different analyses are totally reasonable for this eruption. They’ve still struggled to accurately constrain the size, initial estimates from geologists were as low as a VEI 4 though that never made any sense to me, and as high as 20 cubic kilometers which is much closer to Krakatau in size. Because the majority of the erupted material formed a curtain ignimbrite on the sea floor, measurement has been massively challenging. This makes estimating the gas release in the stratosphere trickier than it otherwise would’ve been. I’ve seen multiple revisions to the total sulfur load of this event, for example. And that normally tracks with the actual size, which has been in flux depending upon measurement methodology.
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This is also interesting, cold once again returning to China and the other side of the planet while we roast. Also been a theme lately it seems. https://watchers.news/2024/10/21/northern-china-breaks-21-mid-october-records-during-an-unusual-cold-spell-2024/
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@bluewave I had actually caught that paper showing Hunga Tonga actually had a slight cooling effect, apparently the water vapor was offset by sulfates and other volcanic particulates that do normally cool in more typical large eruptions. Such an unusual event, very large but very atypical - still the majority of erupted matter ended up under the ocean surface, yet still enough made it into the atmosphere to produce an effect. Very large event overall. That’s actually pretty scary, though the effect was small overall - I think it felt better to assume some of the warmth since Jan 22 was attributable to HTHH’s massive water vapor flux and not just a spike in global ocean / atmospheric heat. Ruang this year was a large and more typical explosive event, but size estimates of the two blasts have varied by the sources I normally go by. Initially I believed the two blasts to cumulatively just cross the VEI 5 threshold, but I’m not 100% on that and need to revisit. Still the plume definitely penetrated the stratosphere, but even a low 5 doesn’t normally perturb the climate much in a measurable way. At the largest estimate, a similar size to St Helens which did not have a measurable impact.
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Made it down to 39. It’s tough for me to appreciate warmth this deep into fall as it feels like a constant reminder of our progressively wrecked climatology. I also enjoy seasonality we’re supposed to have. I’m a hardcore winter guy and love hiking in snowcover, but fall hikes on cool days with the explosion of color on the changing leaves is extremely enjoyable. Some of these days have felt so hot in the sun by mid afternoon it feels like the beginning of September for a couple hours. The one saving grace has been the low dews allowing us to properly cool down at night. But now that’s intermingled into a growing drought, so yes thankfully it’s been a very wet year or this would’ve been more problematic.
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Down to 36 again for me, tying my fall low for the third time. The radiational cooling is significant at my location. I drive a few minutes east to the parkway and often warm up 6/7 degrees.
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Made it down to 38. Really seemed to vary quite a bit the past couple days with pockets of sharp radiative cooling and then areas where it wasn’t as much as you’d think.
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I have no expectations for this winter with everything I’ve read so far. Just hoping we can capitalize on whatever chances we may be fortunate enough to have, like last year. That’s probably all we can ask, seems like winter is starting early this year. And by winter I mean a couple days of cool weather followed by a week+ of ridging.
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36 again, tied with yesterday. Interesting variances. Wife and I are doing Iceland in December this year (normally we go in October or November), taking no chances with my winter weather .
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Down to 36 this AM. Moon was unreal around 4-5am today! Also snapped a nice pic of Orion, always been my favorite constellation since childhood. (Sorry, came out quite a bit more compressed uploaded than on my phone)
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Absolutely beautiful, I actually love the photos that are “just a hint” of Aurora contrasted with the normal sky. I think it’s super beautiful. I’m right in the line of 40N and they were originally saying the line of visibility would be near the Sussex border, so this is pretty amazing (again!). Enjoy guys, this is special!
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42 for a low this AM, coldest of the fall for me so far.
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Reminder I saw an Aurora this year already in Toms River… this solar maximum popping off.
