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The Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991 had a severe impact on the Earth system, with a well-documented warming of the tropical lower stratosphere and a general cooling of the surface. This study focuses on the impact of this event on the mesosphere by analyzing solar occultation temperature data from the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) instrument on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). Previous analyses of lidar temperature data found positive temperature anomalies of up to 12.9 K in the upper mesosphere that peaked in 1993 and were attributed to the Pinatubo eruption. Fitting the HALOE data according to a previously published method indicates a maximum warming of the mesosphere region of 4.1 ± 1.4 K and does not confirm significantly higher values reported for that lidar time series. An alternative fit is proposed that assumes a more rapid response of the mesosphere to the volcanic event and approximates the signature of the Pinatubo with an exponential decay function having an e-folding time of 6 months. It suggests a maximum warming of 5.4 ± 3.0 K, if the mesospheric perturbation is assumed to reach its peak 4 months after the eruption. We conclude that the HALOE time series probably captures the decay of a Pinatubo-induced mesospheric warming at the beginning of its measurement period.
The stratospheric aerosol layer plays an important role in the radiative balance of Earth primarily through scattering of solar radiation. The magnitude of this effect depends critically on the size distribution of the aerosol. The aerosol layer is in large part fed by volcanic eruptions strong enough to inject gaseous sulfur species into the stratosphere. The evolution of the stratospheric aerosol size after volcanic eruptions is currently one of the biggest uncertainties in stratospheric aerosol science. We retrieved aerosol particle size information from satellite solar occultation measurements from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III mounted on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) using a robust spectral method. We show that, surprisingly, some volcanic eruptions can lead to a decrease in average aerosol size, like the 2018 Ambae and the 2021 La Soufrière eruptions. In 2019 an intriguing contrast is observed, where the Raikoke eruption (48∘ N, 153∘ E) in 2019 led to the more expected stratospheric aerosol size increase, while the Ulawun eruptions (5∘ S, 151∘ E), which followed shortly after, again resulted in a reduction in the values of the median radius and absolute distribution width in the lowermost stratosphere. In addition, the Raikoke and Ulawun eruptions were simulated with the aerosol climate model MAECHAM5-HAM. In these model runs, the evolution of the extinction coefficient as well as of the effective radius could be reproduced well for the first 3 months of volcanic activity. However, the long lifetime of the very small aerosol sizes of many months observed in the satellite retrieval data could not be reproduced.
Explosive volcanic eruptions emitting large amounts of sulfur can alter the temperature of the lower stratosphere and change the circulation of the middle atmosphere. The dynamical response of the stratosphere to strong volcanic eruptions has been the subject of numerous studies. The impact of volcanic eruptions on the mesosphere is less well understood because of a lack of large eruptions in the satellite era and only sparse observations before that period. Nevertheless, some measurements indicated an increase in mesospheric mid-latitude temperatures after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. The aim of this study is to uncover potential dynamical mechanisms that may lead to such a mesospheric temperature response. We use the Upper-Atmospheric ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic (UA-ICON) model to simulate the atmospheric response to an idealized strong volcanic injection of 20 Tg S into the stratosphere (about twice as much as the eminent 1991 Pinatubo eruption). Two experiments with differently parameterized effects of sub-grid-scale orography are compared to test the impact of different atmospheric background states. The simulations show a significant warming of the polar summer mesopause of up to 15–21 K in the first November after the eruption. We argue that this is mainly due to intrahemispheric dynamical coupling in the summer hemisphere and is potentially enhanced by interhemispheric coupling with the winter stratosphere. This study focuses on the first austral summer after the eruption because mesospheric temperature anomalies are especially relevant for the properties of noctilucent clouds, whose season peaks around January in the Southern Hemisphere.