Satellites orbiting Earth rushed to record images and data of the after-effects of the catastrophe. Practically a year later, you can now listen to a sonification of the largest eruption of the 21st Century, developed using wind data from ESAs Aeolus mission. Despite exceeding its design life in orbit, ESAs Aeolus mission continues to deliver outstanding information. The usages for Aeolus wind information are many, from enhancing and forecasting the weather condition environment designs, to tracking occasions in near-realtime, such as the recent Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption. A big blip, or drop, can be seen in the Aeolus signal over the Tonga region, suggesting the plume of volcanic ash needs to have reached an elevation above the variety that can be spotted by Aeolus.
One year ago, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano erupted, causing widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, spewing volcanic material approximately 58 km into the atmosphere. It brought an almost 15 m tsunami that crashed ashore, damaging villages, and developing a sonic boom that rippled around the world– twice. Satellites orbiting Earth rushed to catch images and data of the aftermath of the disaster. Practically a year later on, you can now listen to a sonification of the biggest eruption of the 21st Century, developed using wind information from ESAs Aeolus objective. Credit: Jamie Perera/Midjourney
One year ago, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano erupted, triggering widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga, gushing volcanic material approximately 36 miles (58 km) into the atmosphere. It brought an almost 50-foot (15-meter) tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and developing a sonic boom that rippled all over the world– two times.
Satellites orbiting Earth scrambled to capture images and data of the consequences of the catastrophe. Practically a year later on, you can now listen to a sonification (see below) of the biggest eruption of the 21st Century, produced using wind information from ESAs Aeolus objective.
The volcano had actually erupted sporadically because 2009, but activity ramped up in late December 2021 as a series of eruptions sent bursts of volcanic gases gushing from the vent. The intense series of explosions started on January 15, 2022, and produced climatic shock waves, sonic booms, and tsunami waves that traveled throughout the world. It also created a massive plume of water vapor that shot into Earths stratosphere– adequate to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size pool.
Several Earth-observing satellites gathered information prior to, during, and after the eruption. Researchers working on the Aeolus Data Science Innovation Cluster utilized information from ESAs Aeolus mission to track the volcanic surge, thanks to near-realtime data from the Aeolus Virtual Research Environment.
In an interview with Wild Alchemy, ESAs Tommaso Parrinello commented, “One of the most impressive elements of the Aeolus objective is how rapidly the data is with scientists– nearly all of it in less than 3 hours. The information is shown on a easy to use and lovely user interface virtual research study environment, called ViRES, from which we can quickly find trends.
With the Hunga Tonga eruption, the plume essentially obstructed the satellite signal in the location of the eruption as they were injected into the otherwise tidy upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.”
In spite of surpassing its style life in orbit, ESAs Aeolus mission continues to deliver exceptional information. The uses for Aeolus wind information are numerous, from enhancing and predicting the weather climate models, to tracking occasions in near-realtime, such as the recent Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption.
A big blip, or drop, in the Aeolus signal over the region of the eruption suggested the plume of volcanic ash must have reached an elevation above the variety of Aeolus. The series of the Aeolus measurements was raised from 21 km to 30 km in the future in January 2022, after which the satellites cloud observations clearly reflected the location of the ash plume in the stratosphere.
Tommaso discusses, “Adjusting the satellites variety slightly, added to its international coverage, meant our coworkers at European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts were able to track the transport of this plume as it took a trip west in almost-real time. Thanks to the sensitivity of Aeolus to the volcanic particles, it was possible to see the impacts even some months later.”
In a recent paper published in Nature, a team of scientists revealed the unprecedented boost in the worldwide dizzying water mass by 13% (relative to climatological levels) and a five-fold boost of stratospheric aerosol load– the highest in the last 3 decades.
Utilizing a mix of satellite data, including information from ESAs Aeolus satellite, and ground-based observations, the team discovered that due to the extreme altitude, the volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in simply one week and dispersed almost pole-to-pole in 3 months.
The special nature and magnitude of the international stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it amongst the most exceptional natural events in the modern observation period.
Even one year on, interest in the amazing explosive eruption remains. A sound artist has actually recently recreated the sonification of the underwater volcanic eruption using Rayleigh wind strength signals supplied by the ViRES platform.
Utilizing wind information acquired on among its overpasses over the ash cloud of the Hunga Tonga surge, Jamie Perera used an audio sample of among the shock waves, time-stretched it into a ghostly tone, and assigned it to harmonic values transcribed from 90 Aeolus readings taken control of a duration of around 15 minutes.
The listener hears one reading every 2 seconds, in a harmonic variety that spans six piano octaves, the greatest of which can be heard at around 01:18 minutes when the readings reveal the eruptions dust plume at its highest peak (over 20.5 km). The artistic intention behind the sonification was to evoke the otherworldly landscape of Hunga Tonga and other volcanoes.
Jamie commented, “It was very important for me to deal with the sound of the Hunga Tonga shockwaves, applied to the Aeolus information. Im curious about how listening to the data can assist us explore occasions like this from both accurate and psychological point of views.”
Reference: “Global perturbation of stratospheric water and aerosol problem by Hunga eruption” by Sergey Khaykin, Aurelien Podglajen, Felix Ploeger, Jens-Uwe Grooß, Florent Tence, Slimane Bekki, Konstantin Khlopenkov, Kristopher Bedka, Landon Rieger, Alexandre Baron, Sophie Godin-Beekmann, Bernard Legras, Pasquale Sellitto, Tetsu Sakai, John Barnes, Osamu Uchino, Isamu Morino, Tomohiro Nagai, Robin Wing, Gerd Baumgarten, Michael Gerding, Valentin Duflot, Guillaume Payen, Julien Jumelet, Richard Querel, Ben Liley, Adam Bourassa, Benjamin Clouser, Artem Feofilov, Alain Hauchecorne and François Ravetta, 14 December 2022, Communications Earth & & Environment.DOI: 10.1038/ s43247-022-00652-x.