Unprecedented Amount of Water Vapor Injected into Stratosphere by Hunga Tonga Eruption

Eleven Atmospheric River Detection Tools were used with three reanalyses to help quantify uncertainties in our ability to detect Atmospheric Rivers. For the Pacific Coast of the US, results show that, due to an elevated climatology for precipitable water vapor in MERRA-2 relative to ERA5 and JRA-55, more ARs are detected. An animation covering the entire period between 15 January and 30 April is shown. Read More.