Satellite quantification of enhanced methane oxidation applied to the stratospheric plume following Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption

Maarten MJW van Herpen, Isabelle De Smedt, Daphne Meidan, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, Matthew S Johnson, Thomas Röckmann, Jos de Laat · 2026

Read Satellite quantification of enhanced methane oxidation applied to the stratospheric plume following Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption by Maarten MJW van Herpen, Isabelle De Smedt, Daphne Meidan, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, Matthew S Johnson, Thomas Röckmann, Jos de Laat (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13153224.txt.

Description

Van Herpen and six co-authors use space data to weigh how fast a sea volcano plume broke down methane gas in this twenty twenty-six study. Methane is a strong heat-trapping gas, and its main loss route in air is still not well pinned down. The blast sent a huge plume high into the sky.

Inside, a space sensor tracked a short-lived gas formed as methane breaks down in that plume. The plume chewed through methane at a high daily rate for ten days or more. The team links the speed to chlorine freed from ash by light, a route not yet well known. The same trick could one day check man-made methane loss plans.

Catalog record

CREATORMaarten MJW van Herpen, Isabelle De Smedt, Daphne Meidan, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, Matthew S Johnson, Thomas Röckmann, Jos de Laat
YEAR2026
COLLECTIONPAPERS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE50 KB
VERSION1.0
LICENSECC BY 4.0
RIGHTSCC BY
SOURCEEurope PMC

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13153224

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