Volcano eruption observed via weather satellites

[Random Chaos]

Some incredible statistics about the Tonga eruption here - including record cold temperature detected by a satellite and over 400k lightening strikes in just a few hours:

https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/

(unfortunately no direct article link available, it’s the post on Jan 15th)

 

And here are some other great satellite views of the eruption:

 

[Volcanic Winter]

This is potentially big enough to influence the climate for a year or two. We need more information (amount of SO2 released, tephra / DRE volume, and confirmation on how high the plume went to confirm stratospheric injection of those particulates), but it's looking like this has the potential to be a VEI-6 around the size of Pinatubo based on the discussions of several volcanologists/geologists that I follow, which caused a cold climate anomaly for 1992 (and also decreased SST's a bit). Edit: Looks like it was rated VEI-5, so right around just big enough to influence the climate but probably not to the extent of Pinatubo unless it was very high in SO2.

 

I'm not an expert but I believe volcanic climate forcings are usually restricted to the hemisphere of the eruption outside of the really truly massive ones, so I'm not sure if we'll see a global anomaly or centered on the southern hemisphere.

 

This is fascinating however and completely came out of nowhere. Very, very large and extremely powerful eruption with little to suggest a caldera forming event was in the pipeline before it happened. The smaller phreatomagmatic / phreatoplinian eruptions were impressive, but this was just another level with the pressure wave circling the globe, the loud explosive crack being heard at great distances a la Krakatau, and the tsunami generation.

 

Edit: Here's an incredible summary

 

https://www.severe-weather.eu/news/tonga-volcano-massive-eruption-explosion-stratosphere-usa-tsunami-shockwave-fa/

[raindancewx]

In terms of US weather, I'd expect a VEI 5 eruption at this latitude to mainly be important to what it does to Nino 4 and the West Pacific Warm Pool, and maybe the Indian Ocean Dipole. It's probably not a true volcanic winter, but it probably is enough to cool off the ocean in the vicinity of the eruption, in time. On Tropical Tidbits, you can already see a little speck of blue in the area where the eruption was for ocean temperature anomaly change. Those 30C waters by Indonesia getting knocked down a peg by next year would really improve the odds of a cold start to winter for the US in December, since those waters seem to force pseudo MJO five conditions regardless of what the actual RMM index says.