Abstract
The eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano in January 2022
injected water vapor to altitudes as high as 53 km, but also an
unprecedented and much larger amount of water vapor into the
stratosphere. Several months after the eruption, measurements from the
Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and from three ground-based Water
Vapor Millimeter Wave (WVMS) instruments began to measure record-high
amounts of water vapor in the mesosphere over a wide range of latitudes.
While there are indications that some of this mesospheric increase in
water vapor was probably caused by the Hunga Tonga eruption, the
dynamical situation in 2022 also played an important part in
establishing the unusually large water vapor mixing ratios, both in the
upper and lower mesosphere.