Did the 2022 Hunga eruption impact the noctilucent cloud season in 2023/24 and 2024?

Wallis, Sandra; DeLand, Matthew; von Savigny, Christian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3635-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3635-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3635-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 6

Research article

|

27 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 27 Mar 2025

Did the 2022 Hunga eruption impact the noctilucent cloud season in 2023/24 and 2024?

Sandra Wallis, Matthew DeLand, and Christian von Savigny

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3635-2025-supplement

Data sets

MLS/Aura Level 2 Water Vapor (H2O) Mixing Ratio V005 A. Lambert et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/Aura/MLS/DATA2508

MLS/Aura Level 2 Temperature V005 M. Schwartz et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/Aura/MLS/DATA2520

MLS/Aura Level 2 Geopotential Height V005 M. Schwartz et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/Aura/MLS/DATA2507

OMPS LP PMC Data M. T. DeLand https://sbuv.gsfc.nasa.gov/pmc/ompslp/

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Short summary

The 2022 Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha'apai eruption emitted about 150 Tg H₂O that partly reached the upper polar Southern Hemisphere mesosphere in the beginning of 2024. Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) did not show a clear perturbation in their occurrence frequency, but the slight increase from mid-January to February could potentially have been caused by the additional H₂O. It needed 2 years to reach the summer polar mesopause region, analogous to the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that is argued to have caused the first sightings of NLCs.