Remnants of the eruption of the Tonga volcano paint a stunning sunset in the sky of Australia

Weather of Arabia - A month after the eruption of the Tonga volcano in the Pacific Ocean, the cloud of gases and volcanic dust is still circulating in the Earth's atmosphere, until it passed for the second time over Australia and painted a wonderful sunset scene with a charming pink glow, so how does that happen?

The glowing sunset seen last week in the sky of Australia is one of the long-term effects of the Tonga volcano, where the volcanic eruption on January 15th released volcanic smoke and sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and was circulating in the atmosphere at a great height, so that no It affects our daily weather, but has added a red glow to the sunrise and sunset, and the smoke cloud has now completed its first full orbit around the globe, and has traveled over Australia for the second time.

Volcanic smoke reaches the mesosphere

Recent analysis by NASA found that the initial eruption of volcanic smoke passed through the first two layers of the atmosphere (the troposphere and the stratosphere) to briefly reach the third layer of the atmosphere, the mesosphere.

According to NASA estimates, the smoke plume rose to 58 kilometers at its highest point.

The plume of volcanic smoke then spread and became orbiting the Earth in the stratosphere, and the remains of the Tonga volcano can still be seen on LIDAR images taken over eastern Australia, where sulfur dioxide and a little volcanic ash appear at an altitude of about 25 km in the stratosphere clouds above the troposphere.

The reason for changing the color of sunset and sunrise with the passage of volcanic smoke

The particles in the atmosphere usually scatter the light from the sun, which is why the sky is blue. Sunsets (and sunrises) appear reddish because the sun's rays pass through more of the atmosphere, at which point only the longer waves of the visible spectrum (the red part) are scattered.

After an eruption, the fine ash from a volcanic eruption in the stratosphere can be carried by winds around the world, and sulfur dioxide from volcanoes reacts in the atmosphere to form sulfate aerosols (aerosols are small particles suspended in the air). Aerosols scatter sunlight, and sulfate aerosols in particular can intensify the effect of scattering sunlight at sunset by adding more obstacles to the passage of light, so the red color appears intensely and is also reflected from the clouds, giving sunset (and sunrise) Its glowing colour.