Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (BUV) retrievals of mid-stratospheric aerosols from the 2022 Hunga Eruption

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-12-2026

Abstract

On 15 January 2022, a highly explosive eruption of the submarine Hunga volcano (Kingdom of Tonga) generated the largest stratospheric hydration event ever observed and the largest aerosol perturbation since the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. Here, we develop a novel method for satellite retrieval of stratospheric aerosol optical depth (AOD) and layer peak height (zp) using solar backscattered ultraviolet (BUV) radiation; this is made possible by the exceptional mid-stratospheric altitude of the Hunga aerosols. We analyze BUV observations of the Hunga stratospheric aerosol cloud on 17 January 2022 (47 h after the eruption), using BUV band 1 measurements from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the ESA/Copernicus Sentinel-5 precursor (S5P) satellite, and the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite- Nadir Profiler (OMPS-NP) on board the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-20 satellite. We retrieve AOD and zp by fitting hyperspectral BUV radiance ratios in a narrow spectral window restricted to 289–296 nm, chosen in order to reduce interference from tropospheric clouds while highly sensitive to stratospheric aerosols located above ozone peak altitude. The retrieval employs radiative transfer calculations from the Vector Linearized Discrete Ordinate Radiative Transfer (VLIDORT) forward model. We assume a single Hunga aerosol layer composed of polydisperse sulfuric acid spherical particles embedded in a Rayleigh atmosphere with a known ozone profile. The ozone profile is supplied from a version of the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) Stratospheric Composition Reanalysis of the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on board NASA Earth Observing System-chemistry (EOS Aura) satellite-produced by NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office using a stratospheric chemistry model and MERRA-2 meteorology. We also include a sulfur dioxide SO2 layer, which coincides spatially with the retrieved aerosol vertical profile, and with the total loading normalized to the stratospheric SO2 vertical column density from the operational TROPOMI SO2 product. We validate our AOD retrievals against ground-based AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET) direct-sun AOD measurements, and zp retrievals against Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) overpasses using Lagrangian trajectory modeling. We estimate the total Hunga stratospheric wet aerosol mass (sulfuric acid solution droplets, including water uptake) to be Maer∼0.5±0.05 Tg. This value is consistent with our previous BUV estimates of Hunga SO2 emissions (∼ 0.4–0.5 Tg SO2) and rapid conversion of SO2 to sulfate aerosol. Based on these BUV retrievals we can also estimate the sulfuric acid (H2SO4) mass fraction w∼0.4 and H2 SO4/H2O solution density: ρ∼1.34 g cm−3. These new values represent an extreme departure from the stratospheric background sulfate aerosol (Junge layer), which is typified by values of w∼0.75 and ρ∼1.7 g cm−3 supported by decades of observations of the lower stratosphere during both quiescent and volcanically impacted periods. The new low values, inferred from BUV observations and backed up by microphysical modeling, are a result of the uniquely water-rich conditions in the early Hunga plume. Relative humidity in the plume, as modeled by the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model with the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmospheres (CARMA), reached values as high as 60 %, compared to background values closer to 1 %. These findings are unique in the long-term observational record of the stratosphere; similar relative humidities only otherwise occur in overshooting clouds or cold winter hemisphere vortices.

Publication Title

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques

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