One-Minute Resolution GOES-R Observations of Lamb and Gravity Waves
Triggered by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Eruptions on 15 January 2022
Abstract
We use high temporal-resolution mesoscale imagery from the Geostationary
Operational Environmental Satellite-R (GOES-R) series to track the Lamb
and gravity waves generated by the January 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga
Ha’apai eruption. The 1-min cadence of these limited area
(~1,000x1,000 km2) brightness temperatures ensures an
order of magnitude better temporal sampling than full-disk imagery
available at 10-min or 15-min cadence. We show that previous studies
using the low-cadence full-disk data considerably overestimated the
horizontal wavelength (~400–500 km) and period
(~20–30 min) of the Lamb wave due to spatiotemporal
aliasing. The 1-min imagery reveals a leading Lamb wave with a
wavelength of only ~130 km and trailing waves with even
shorter wavelengths of ~40–80 km. The characteristic
propagation speed is estimated at ~315±15 m s-1,
resulting in typical periods of 2–7 min. From the time of appearance of
the first detectable Lamb wave, we derive an emission time of
~04:07 UTC for the primary pressure pulse. Weaker Lamb
waves were also emitted by the last major eruption at
~08:40–08:45 UTC, which were, however, only identified
in the near field but not in the far field. We also noted wind effects,
such as mean flow advection and critical level filtering in the
propagation of concentric gravity wave rings and observed gravity waves
traveling near their theoretical maximum speed.