I’m in Mississippi and we’re seeing record heat. I’ve read that the South Pacific volcano from January of 2022 may be part of the reason. How?
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Large volcanic eruptions tend to cause global cooling by pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere where they help form a reflective aerosol layer that reflects some sunlight back into space.
Some famous examples of sudden cold spells following eruptions were caused by Laki in Iceland in 1783-4; Tambora in Indonesia in 1815; Krakatau (Indonesia again) in 1883; Agung (would you believe it – Indonesia) in 1963-4 and Pinatubo in Indon – only kidding – it was the Philippines in 1991.
The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption was colossal, and could well have had the largest impact on the atmosphere since Krakatau. However, for reasons we don’t fully understand yet, it doesn’t seem to have produced relatively small amounts of stratospheric sulfur. But, because it was an underwater eruption, the huge plume that reached over 55km tall, put a lot of water vapour into the atmosphere. As others have pointed out, water vapour, particularly at altitude serves as a greenhouse gas, so it could have contributed to this summer’s hot weather in much of the Northern Hemisphere (apart from here in the UK where it has been dismal).
However, there are other forces at work, not least that the Eastern Pacific is going through an El Niño event where abnormally warm water drives high temperatures across the globe. And that is added to our own catastrophic carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels which are pushing global temperatures relentlessly upward.
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