Low sulfur emissions from 2022 Hunga eruption due to seawater–magma interactions

verfasst von

Jie Wu, Shane J. Cronin, Marco Brenna, Sung Hyun Park, Alessio Pontesilli, Ingrid A. Ukstins, David Adams, Joali Paredes-Mariño, Kyle Hamilton, Mila Huebsch, Diego González-García, Chris Firth, James D.L. White, Alexander R.L. Nichols, Terry Plank, Jitraporn Vongsvivut, Annaleise Klein, Frank Ramos, Folauhola Latu’ila, Taaniela Kula

Abstract

The explosive January 2022 Hunga submarine eruption in Tonga injected unprecedented water volumes into the upper atmosphere, generating widespread climatic impacts. However, it ejected anomalously little sulfur compared with other eruptions of similar volume. We explain the missing sulfur with volatile budgets calculated from volcanic ash samples spanning the eruption. We show that magma was stored in a weakly stratified reservoir at 2.1 km to >5.6 km depth. Magma rose within <3 min and fragmented at 400–1,000 m below sea level. This preserves microscale chemical mingling including ~1 wt% contrasts in magmatic water concentrations. The 11-h eruption released a total of 319 Tg of magmatic water, which is <10% of that derived from magmatic seawater interaction. Comparing magmatic and residual glass sulfur concentrations shows a total release of 9.4 TgS, but >93% of this entered the ocean during submarine magma fragmentation. These results raise the concern that satellite SO₂ monitoring underestimates the magma output of submarine explosions and they are probably near invisible in ice-core records, despite their climate influence caused by water injection into the upper atmosphere.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Abteilung Mineralogie

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Auckland (UoA)
University of Otago
Korea Institute Of Ocean Science & Technology
Istituto Nazionale Di Geofisica E Vulcanologia, Rome
Queensland University of Technology
Complutense Universität Madrid (UCM)
Universität Canterbury
Columbia University
Australian Synchrotron
New Mexico State University
Tonga Geological Services

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Nature geoscience

Band

18

Seiten

518-524

Anzahl der Seiten

7

ISSN

1752-0894

Publikationsdatum

06.2025

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Erdkunde und Planetologie

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 13 – Klimaschutzmaßnahmen

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01691-7 (Zugang: Geschlossen)