Chris Morrison: Sensational Findings Point to Hunga Tonga Eruption....

Sensational Findings Point to Hunga Tonga Eruption as Prime Suspect Behind Recent Temperature Spike

In January 2022, a massive underwater volcano called Hunga Tonga suddenly erupted and shot so much water into the upper atmosphere that levels in the stratosphere rose suddenly by at least 10%. It was a genuine one in 100, even 200 year event and was reasonably expected to produce temporary weather changes around the globe. Sure enough, subsequent temperatures showed a 0.3-0.4°C upward spike.

Needless to say, the Net Zero fanatics claimed the rise as their own and blamed it on humans controlling the climate by increasing the trace gas carbon dioxide. Today the Daily Sceptic can give wider publicity to sensational recent findings that suggest Hunga Tonga was the main culprit in producing the recent spike. The scientists directly link a dramatic cooling in the upper atmosphere of between 0.5-2°C to Hunga Tonga. It is generally held that there is an anti-correlation between the lower and upper atmosphere and cooling at the top produces warming at the bottom due to a number of complex atmospheric processes.

Hunga Tonga was an unusual volcanic eruption since it produced few dust particulates that usually cool the surface. Two recent land-based eruptions, El Chichon and Pinatubo, caused a temporary downward spike of around 0.5°C. The team of Colorado-based scientists found that the Hunga Tonga cooling was “comparable in magnitude” to the stratospheric warming caused by the two surface volcanoes in 1982 and 1991. The scientists reported “good agreement of observations with chemistry-climate model simulations”. “Cooling is mainly due to Hunga Tonga H2O [water] impacts,” they state.

This is dramatic stuff. It appears to promote Hunga Tonga as the prime cause in explaining the recent spike in temperatures. Indeed it could be concluded that the temperature rise should have been a little higher – and higher even still if the effects of a recent strong El Niño natural oscillation are included. Satellite observations, confirmed by computer analysis, shows stratospheric cooling of 0.5°C to 1°C in the middle and upper stratosphere during 2022 through middle 2023, followed by stronger reductions of 1°C to 2°C in the mesosphere after the middle of 2023, note the scientists. Last year, two distinguished atmospheric scientists observed the anti-correlation between the higher and lower atmosphere and suggested the lower stratosphere cooled by approximately two degrees per degree of warming nearer the surface. Where the troposphere has been anomalously warming, the lower stratosphere has been anomalously cooling “and vice versa”, note the scientists.

Needless to say, there has been no mention in mainstream media of these interesting and important findings. In fact, mainstream media are in the last knocking of a scare that has done valiant service in the cause of pushing the Net Zero political agenda. There was something almost heroic about Mark Poynting’s latest effort for the BBC titled ‘Record January warmth puzzles climate scientists’. The warming was said to be due to “emissions of planet-heating gases from humans”, but, continued Poynting, scientists say they cannot fully explain “why last month was particularly hot“. It might be suggested that they could stop relying on reanalysed computer model data and look at the accurate satellite temperature readings. As shown below, they give a different picture with the temperature anomaly dropping like a stone in the last three months.

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But the BBC, in common with most mainstream media, does not do satellite data – some might say because the trends in those data do not fully align with Net Zero fear-mongering. For some inexplicable reason there is safety in numbers by relying on dodgy, urban heat corrupted surface measurements, pseudoscientific weather attribution guesses (another day, another once-in-a-hundred-year event) and garbage in, garbage out computer models. As regular readers know, during the Great American Free Speech Terror, Google AdSense demonetised the UAH operation in early 2022 on the grounds of publishing “unreliable and harmful information”. Since then UAH has provided a guide to the recent temperature spike starting around 2023 as the widespread climate effects of Hunga Tonga seemed to kick in. Is the recent downturn, obvious to all except committed Net Zero fanatics, likely to last? Recent falls in sea and air temperatures suggest the figures are now on a sustained downward trend. While local area temperatures are not much of a guide to global trends, it is interesting to note that few commentators mentioned that last month in the UK was the fifth coldest January since the turn of the century.

Curiously, there has been remarkably little scientific work published into the climatic effects of the Hunga Tonga eruption – one suspects due to a politically contrived shortage of funds for academics trying to investigate natural explanations of the anomalous trends. But there have been sceptical champions and one of those taking an interest in Hunga Tonga is Javier Vinos. Writing in Dr Judith Curry’s blog, he observes that nothing even in alarmist models of the effect of recent small CO2 annual increases on climate could have led us to expect such a large abrupt warming. “There is no study to suggest that the gradual increase in CO2 could lead to a sudden increase in climate variability,” he notes. Writing in July 2024, he identified the Hunga Tonga volcano as the “prime suspect” for the warming spell.

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The image above shows that the extra water vapour from the eruption took about a year to blanket the northern hemisphere, an effect that can be seen with the dark green tones. “Thus, there are dynamical events in the stratosphere that have the appropriate time lag to coincide with the abrupt warming in 2023,” he adds.

It hasn’t stopped the Armageddonites promoting climate psychosis, of course. And there are few alarmists more alarming than Professor Andrew Dessler of the Texas A&M University. Last July he tried to head off any Hunga Tonga warming malarky by stating that his research indicated the volcano eruption had actually cooled the Earth, “similar to other major volcanic events”. By dismissing the volcanic eruption as a major factor in the recent warming, Dressler said he hoped his study would reinforce his point that “human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are the primary driver of climate change”.

While it may still be possible to debate with some alarmists, such as LBC Radio’s favourite Jim Dale – although after his recent call for climate deniers to be outlawed there might be a small chance of a pre-emptive citizen’s arrest – not so with Dessler, who told Joe Rogan in 2022 that there was no debate on the “fact” of climate change. “My feeling is that I won’t debate the science. So the science is set,” he claimed.

And you wonder where the BBC gets it ideas from. Onwards and upwards, like the Hunga Tonga water plume, we press on.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. He is a freelance journalist who started in financial journalism in the late 1970s and for nearly 20 years ran a company – Evandale Publishing. This article was sourced HERE