Lidar Detection of Hunga Tonga Volcanic Aerosols in Antarctica | CU Experts

Overview

Atmospheric lidar operating from McMurdo Station, Antarctica captured observations in late 2022 through 2023 which show unique signals of stratospheric aerosols injected by the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption from January 2022. The aerosols observed show strong atmospheric circulation features, have several different appearance forms throughout the year such as diffuse layers and concentrated clusters, and are observed throughout the entire season of observations. These features appear suddenly in the data about 10 months after the eruption when the polar vortex started to break up above Antarctica, bringing up questions about their transport mechanism that we will use these lidar observations to answer. This study presents sample cases of these observations and lays out a plan of study which will further assess these unique aerosol measurements.