Hunga Tonga Eruption Triggered Massive Natural Methane Destruction in Atmosphere

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in January 2022, sending a plume of ash, steam and gas nearly 40 miles above the Earth’s surface. The blast released power hundreds of times stronger than the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, triggered a tsunami and generated a sonic boom that circled the planet twice.

A study published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications reported that the eruption also produced roughly 330,000 tons of methane while simultaneously destroying a portion of those emissions.

Researchers tracked a formaldehyde cloud for 10 days and calculated that about 900 tons of methane were broken down each day. ” Formaldehyde forms when methane is destroyed in the atmosphere, and its short lifespan of only a few hours indicated continuous methane removal over more than a week. The process appears to mirror chemistry previously identified over the Atlantic Ocean.

Saharan dust mixes with salt spray to create iron-based particles; sunlight striking those particles generates chlorine atoms that react with methane. The eruption lofted enough salty water vapor to fill around 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, allowing the same chlorine-driven reaction to occur inside the volcanic plume.

” Methane is roughly 80 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a 20-year period and currently accounts for about a third of global warming.

Atmospheric concentrations have doubled over the last two centuries. Pete Edwards, an atmospheric chemist at the University of York who was not involved in the research, called the findings interesting but “very difficult” to confirm. ” The study authors agreed that additional research is required before any industrial application.

Johnson said replication of the natural process is “an obvious idea for industry to try,” but only if it can be proven safe and effective. Van Herpen suggested the mechanism could eventually inform methods to remove methane emissions at their source or guide geoengineering approaches that inject iron-based particles over the ocean.