It would be pretty amazing if, say, an oil spill cleaned itself up or if a car somehow removed carbon dioxide from the air while driving down the highway. Well, according to new research published in Nature Communications, a volcano may have done something like that.
When the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano erupted in 2022, it blasted huge amounts of methane and debris into the atmosphere…and then partially destroyed that methane itself, almost as if it were embarrassed that it had made a mess and scrambled to clean it up while profusely apologizing.
The eruption itself was already historic. The underwater volcano in the South Pacific exploded with such incredible force that ash and gas shot about 40 miles into the air, becoming the first ever recorded instance of a volcanic plume reaching the atmosphere. The blast was so powerful it was heard over 1200 miles away in New Zealand.
Scientists have been studying it ever since, and why wouldn’t they? When something that momentous happens, you’re going to try to figure out why and what happened in its aftermath.
“Oops, Let Me Clean That Up” – The Volcano, Probably
It turns out that what happened in its aftermath is almost more impressive than the wildly impressive explosion itself. The researchers say that the volcano may have accidentally triggered a rare chemical process in the atmosphere. To figure out what was going on, they used satellite data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P spacecraft. They found high levels of formaldehyde inside the volcanic plume. Weird, considering that formaldehyde is usually created when methane breaks down.
Was this volcano breaking down the methane it belched out during its eruption? That’s what it seemed like. As for why, the likely culprit was the seawater the eruption had to break through on its way into the atmosphere.
When the volcano erupted underwater, it launched an enormous amount of seawater, salt particles, and ash into the stratosphere. Sunlight hit that mixture, sparking a chemical reaction that created a reactive chlorine compound capable of destroying methane molecules. The researchers tracked the chemical reaction for more than a week as the plume drifted slowly across the Pacific toward South America.
The volcano didn’t completely erase its tracks. The researchers estimate that the eruption pumped 300 gigagrams of methane into the atmosphere and removed only about 900 metric tons per day. It’s not exactly an eco-friendly volcano, but still, it’s an incredible discovery since it’s a process that happened entirely on its own, with no human intervention. It’s also something humans might be able to take some inspiration from and replicate to reduce atmospheric methane, which is responsible for the greenhouse gases choking our planet.
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