Identification

Title

Strong persistent cooling of the stratosphere after the Hunga eruption

Abstract

The 2022 eruption of the Hunga volcano was a major event that propelled aerosols and water vapor up to an altitude of 53-57 km. It caused an unprecedented stratospheric hydration that is expected to affect composition, thermal structure, circulation and dynamics for years. Using vertically high resolved satellite observations from radio occultation, we focus on the temperature impact in the stratosphere from the eruption in January 2022 until December 2023. Separating the signals of the Hunga eruption from the broader stratospheric variability reveals a strong persistent radiative cooling of up to -4 K in the tropical and subtropical middle stratosphere from early after the eruption until mid-2023, clearly corresponding to the water vapor distribution. Our results provide new insights from observations into both the localized temperature changes and the persistent stratospheric cooling caused by the Hunga eruption and document this exceptional climatic effect not seen for previous volcanic eruptions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7kh0sj8

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-08-21T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-10T19:59:24.129932

Metadata language

eng; USA