GISS Lunch Seminar

Speaker: Georgiy Stenchikov (King Abdullah Univ)
Topic: How does the height of the volcanic injection affect the evolution of volcanic cloud: the 2022 Hunga Eruption vs. 1991 Pinatubo Eruption

Most up-to-date climate models tend to simulate the evolution of volcanic clouds realistically. This includes the injection stage and initial evolution until the aerosol plume stabilizes at the altitude of neutral buoyancy. We modeled the plume evolution of the Pinatubo (1991) and Hunga (2022) eruptions using the WRF-Chem regional meteorology-chemistry model to examine the sensitivity of plume dynamics to injection height, ash presence, initial concentrations of volcanic materials, and water vapor (WV) injections.