One yr in the past, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, inflicting widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, spewing volcanic materials as much as 58 km into the ambiance. It introduced a virtually 15 m tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and making a sonic growth that rippled world wide – twice. Satellites orbiting Earth scrambled to seize photographs and knowledge of the aftermath of the catastrophe. Almost a yr later, now you can hearken to a sonification of the most important eruption of the 21st Century, created utilizing wind knowledge from ESA’s Aeolus mission. Credit: Jamie Perera/Midjourney
One yr in the past, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, inflicting widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, spewing volcanic materials as much as 36 miles (58 km) into the ambiance. It introduced a virtually 50-foot (15-meter) tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and making a sonic growth that rippled world wide – twice.
Satellites orbiting Earth scrambled to seize photographs and knowledge of the aftermath of the catastrophe. Almost a yr later, now you can hearken to a sonification (see under) of the most important eruption of the 21st Century, created utilizing wind knowledge from ESA’s Aeolus mission.
The volcano had erupted sporadically since 2009, however exercise ramped up in late December 2021 as a collection of eruptions despatched bursts of volcanic gases spewing from the vent. The intense collection of explosions started on January 15, 2022, and generated atmospheric shock waves, sonic booms, and tsunami waves that traveled the world over. It additionally created an enormous plume of water vapor that shot into Earth’s stratosphere – sufficient to fill greater than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming swimming pools.
Several Earth-observing satellites collected knowledge earlier than, throughout, and after the eruption. Scientists engaged on the Aeolus Data Science Innovation Cluster used knowledge from ESA’s Aeolus mission to trace the volcanic explosion, because of near-realtime knowledge from the Aeolus Virtual Research Environment.
In an interview with Wild Alchemy, ESA’s Tommaso Parrinello commented, “One of the most impressive aspects of the Aeolus mission is how quickly the data is with scientists – almost all of it in less than three hours. The data is displayed on a beautiful and user-friendly interface virtual research environment, called ViRES, from which we can easily detect trends.
With the Hunga Tonga eruption, the plume essentially blocked the satellite signal in the area of the eruption as they were injected into the otherwise ‘clean’ upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.”
Despite exceeding its design life in orbit, ESA’s Aeolus mission continues to ship glorious knowledge. The makes use of for Aeolus wind knowledge are many, from predicting the climate and enhancing local weather fashions, to monitoring occasions in near-realtime, such because the latest Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption. The picture reveals how the ash from the eruption left its mark in Aeolus’ measurements on 15 January 2022. An enormous blip, or drop, may be seen within the Aeolus sign over the Tonga area, suggesting the plume of volcanic ash should have reached an altitude above the vary that may be detected by Aeolus. Credit: ESA
An enormous blip, or drop, within the Aeolus sign over the area of the eruption steered the plume of volcanic ash should have reached an altitude above the vary of Aeolus. The vary of the Aeolus measurements was raised from 21 km to 30 km in a while in January 2022, after which the satellite tv for pc’s cloud observations clearly mirrored the placement of the ash plume within the stratosphere.
Tommaso explains, “Adjusting the satellite’s range slightly, added to its global coverage, meant our colleagues at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts were able to track the transport of this plume as it travelled west in almost-real time. Thanks to the sensitivity of Aeolus to the volcanic particles, it was possible to see the effects even some months later.”
In a latest paper revealed in Nature, a group of scientists confirmed the unprecedented enhance within the international stratospheric water mass by 13% (relative to climatological ranges) and a five-fold enhance of stratospheric aerosol load – the very best within the final three a long time.
Using a mixture of satellite tv for pc knowledge, together with knowledge from ESA’s Aeolus satellite tv for pc, and ground-based observations, the group discovered that because of the excessive altitude, the volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in only one week and dispersed almost pole-to-pole in three months.
The distinctive nature and magnitude of the worldwide stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the many most outstanding pure occasions within the trendy commentary period.
Even one yr on, curiosity within the extraordinary explosive eruption stays. A sound artist has not too long ago recreated the sonification of the underwater volcanic eruption utilizing Rayleigh wind depth alerts offered by the ViRES platform.
Using wind knowledge obtained on one among its overpasses over the ash cloud of the Hunga Tonga explosion, Jamie Perera used an audio pattern of one of many shock waves, time-stretched it right into a ghostly tone, and assigned it to harmonic values transcribed from 90 Aeolus readings taken over a length of roughly 15 minutes.
The listener hears one studying each two seconds, in a harmonic vary that spans six piano octaves, the very best of which may be heard at round 01:18 minutes when the readings present the eruption’s mud plume at its highest peak (over 20.5 km). The inventive intention behind the sonification was to evoke the otherworldly panorama of Hunga Tonga and different volcanoes.
Jamie commented, “It was important for me to work with the sound of the Hunga Tonga shockwaves, applied to the Aeolus data. I’m curious about how listening to the data can help us explore events like this from both factual and emotional perspectives.”
Reference: “Global perturbation of stratospheric water and aerosol burden by Hunga eruption” by Sergey Khaykin, Aurelien Podglajen, Felix Ploeger, Jens-Uwe Grooß, Florent Tence, Slimane Bekki, Konstantin Khlopenkov, Kristopher Bedka, Landon Rieger, Alexandre Baron, Sophie Godin-Beekmann, Bernard Legras, Pasquale Sellitto, Tetsu Sakai, John Barnes, Osamu Uchino, Isamu Morino, Tomohiro Nagai, Robin Wing, Gerd Baumgarten, Michael Gerding, Valentin Duflot, Guillaume Payen, Julien Jumelet, Richard Querel, Ben Liley, Adam Bourassa, Benjamin Clouser, Artem Feofilov, Alain Hauchecorne and François Ravetta, 14 December 2022, Communications Earth & Environment.
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-022-00652-x
