Observing the SO2 and Sulphate Aerosol Plumes from the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai Eruption with IASI

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano violently erupted on 15 January 2022, producing the largest perturbation of the stratospheric aerosol layer since Pinatubo 1991, despite the estimated modest injection of SO2. Here we present novel SO2 and sulphate aerosol (SA) co-retrievals from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Instrument, and use them to study the dispersion of the Hunga Tonga plume over the entire year 2022. We observe rapid conversion of SO2 (e-folding time: 17.1±0.6 days) to sulphate aerosols (SA), with an initial injected burden of >1.0 Tg. This points at larger SO2 injections than previously thought. A long-lasting SA plume was observed, with a meridional dispersion of marked anomalies from the tropics to the higher southern hemispheric latitudes. A very small SA removal is observed after 1-year dispersion. The total SA mass burden was estimated at 1.6 ± 0.1 Tg in total column, with a build-up e-folding time of about 2 months.