Large amounts of water vapour are carried into the stratosphere by Tonga volcanoes

The biggest environmental impact of the Tonga eruption was not sulfur dioxide or carbon dioxide, as everyone thought, but water gas!

According to NASA weather satellites, Tonga volcanoes are pumping water and gas into the stratosphere, which could affect future climate.

Water vapor, also known as water vapor, is ubiquitous in our lives, but why is it responsible for altering climate patterns?

So could the 2022 global heat wave have something to do with it?

The aftermath of a volcanic eruption

Volcanic eruptions, like earthquakes, are graded on a scale of eight. The undersea eruptions in Tonga are on the scale of 5 to 6, releasing the energy equivalent of an earthquake of more than magnitude 8.

Because IT was an underwater volcano, it CAUSED a huge tsunami, so that the country of Tonga was directly submerged by the tsunami, and lost contact with the world.

According to Japanese media reports, the tsunami was one metre high when it reached Japan after crossing halfway across the Pacific Ocean.

The volcanic ash from Tonga's undersea volcano even broke through the water and soared into the sky, showing just how explosive it was.

The impact of a volcano on the Earth is not in how much magma it spews, but in its ash. Volcanic ash is filled with particles of all sizes that stay in the air for different periods of time.

There are also a lot of gases in the ash, but there are two that have the biggest impact.

After a volcano erupts, there is a "year without a summer," which means that the temperature of the year decreases.

This is because sulfur dioxide from volcanoes is the first to occupy the atmosphere, causing a phenomenon called the icechamber effect.

When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it oxidizes into sulfate aerosols, which have the ability to reflect sunlight, reducing the amount of solar energy the Earth receives.

But these sulphate aerosols soon fall down as water vapour, and another volcanic gas takes over: carbon dioxide.

The eruption is followed by a short period of cooling, followed by a long period of warming and drying.

The most severe volcanic eruption in Earth's history occurred about 250 million years ago, when the land masses were all pressed together to form the supercontinent Pangea, resulting in unprecedented volcanic activity.

It was followed by two huge eruptions, one in present-day Emei and the other in present-day Siberia.

It was the start of a super extinction, the worst end-Permian extinction in biological history.

Only about 5% of the species in the entire biological world survived.

After the end-Permian mass extinction, Earth entered the Triassic, the hottest and driest period on record, and for the first 10 million years of the Triassic, the entire supercontinent of Pangea was dead.

It wasn't until about 233 million years ago that Earth was saved by a storm that lasted 2 million years.

This suggests that after volcanic eruptions, sustained global warming is the dominant trend. So how much gas do Tonga volcanoes spew into the atmosphere?

An eruption of water vapor

NASA's Aura satellite has a microwave edge Explorer that measures the concentration of various gases and aerosols in the atmosphere.

It examined the atmosphere above the Tonga volcano, and to everyone's surprise, the gas that came out the most was water.

It's the first time this has happened in the history of volcano monitoring, and the project's director, Luis Milan, says nothing like this has ever been seen.

So why does Tonga spew water when it erupts?

Milan thinks this may have something to do with the fact that Tonga volcanoes are under the sea.

Unlike volcanoes on land, they emit gas through seawater. Carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide are soluble in water, and this solubility increases with increasing pressure.

Every 10 meters, the pressure increases by one atmosphere, and on the way out, a large amount of gas dissolves in the water.

But the energy released by the volcano warms nearby waters, increasing water evaporation, which makes up the bulk of the gas emitted by Tonga's undersea volcano.

The gas was pushed into the stratosphere by the volcanic eruption, and the Aura satellite found that it increased by about 10 percent.

Some people may be curious, water vapor is not steam?

It's not bad for the environment, it's going to rain down anyway, so what's to worry about?

Maybe the structure of the atmosphere is more complex than we thought, and the water vapor is not as harmless as we thought.

The stratosphere

We are talking about five main layers of the atmosphere, from the inside out: troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, warm layer and escape layer.

The stratosphere, 10 to 50 kilometers above the ground, is originally characterized by no clouds, very little moisture, and no weather.

We usually fly in the stratosphere to reduce the impact of the weather.

At 20 to 30 kilometers above the ground, there is a thin layer of ozone, which is embedded in the middle of the stratosphere and acts as a UV absorber.

Ozone is made up of three oxygen atoms and is easily disturbed. Whenever free radicals are present, the three-oxygen ozone system will collapse and become oxygen.

Water turns stratospheric chlorine and bromine into free radicals that destroy the structure of the ozone layer.

There is not much water vapor in the stratosphere, which holds 90% of the water vapor in the atmosphere, so most weather changes occur there.

The eruption of the Tonga volcano, however, sent the gas directly into the stratosphere, causing a dramatic increase in the amount of water in the stratosphere, which was suddenly 146 billion kilograms of water, the equivalent of 58,000 swimming pools.

This water stays in the stratosphere for years, continuing to react with chlorine and bromine to form free radicals that damage the ozone layer.

After the destruction of the ozone layer, the earth's environment will undergo great changes.

The ozone layer is destroyed

The ozone layer is a barrier for the earth to protect itself, but it is not the original equipment of the earth.

The formation of ozone dates back to 2.6 billion years ago, when free oxygen first appeared on Earth, and then gradually formed over hundreds of millions of years.

Thanks to ozone, most living things on Earth no longer have to endure direct radiation from the sun.

Inside the sun's light, in addition to the light we can see, there is also invisible light, which has the danger of ultraviolet light.

Ultraviolet light has a shorter wavelength than violet light, which is the shortest form of visible light, but it has a high frequency, so it has a strong energy. When exposed to ultraviolet light, cells are more likely to become cancerous. Human skin cancer is caused by ultraviolet light.

Ozone resonates with ultraviolet rays and absorbs some of the energy that is essential to causing cancer, thereby reducing the amount of UV rays that would otherwise cause skin cancer.

Of course, the destruction of ozone does not only increase ultraviolet light, it also heats up the Earth.

Ultraviolet light is highly energetic, and when the ozone layer is unable to block it, it will bring more energy from the sun to the Earth.

In addition to the earth's already serious greenhouse effect, the earth's future temperature is likely to be even higher.

Sure enough, half a year after the eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga, the Northern Hemisphere saw its hottest summer in 100 years, with heat waves in Britain, Germany and other places, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.

The American TV presenter went to the North Pole and it was so hot that she had to wear short sleeves.

James Anderson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University, has been studying the effects of water vapour on the stratosphere.

He found that it was not just the Tongan eruption, but that global warming was causing an increase in heavy rain on Earth, which, when it happened, was also sending large amounts of water vapour into the stratosphere.

It can be said that the biggest damage to the ozone layer is not human freon, but these seemingly harmless water.

While Europe is in the grip of a heat wave, South Korea is suffering the heaviest downpours in a century.

The summer heat is likely to be accompanied by a winter cold, with many regions experiencing the worst cold snap in a century. The smoke from the eruption of Mount Tonga has cleared, but its effects will continue.

An eruption is instantaneous, but the effects of the gas it spews are felt for decades, even centuries.