Network Analysis Measuring the Impact of Volcanic Eruptions

Abstract

Volcanoes can be extremely damaging to the environment, human society, and also impact climate change. During volcanic eruption, massive amounts of gases and dust particles are thrown into the atmosphere and propagated instantaneously by the stratospheric circulation, resulting in a huge impact on the interactive pattern of the atmosphere. Here, we develop a climate network-based framework to study the temporal evolution of lower stratospheric atmosphere conditions in relation to a volcanic eruption, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) volcano, which erupted on 20 December 2021. Various spatial-temporal topological features of the climate network are introduced to analyze the nature of the HTHH. We show that our framework has the potential to identify the dominant eruption events of the HTHH and reveal the impact of the HTHH eruption. We find that during the eruption periods of the HTHH, the correlation behaviors in the lower stratosphere became much stronger than during normal periods. Both the degree and clustering coefficients increased significantly during the dominant eruption periods, and could be used as indications for the eruption of HTHH. The underlying mechanism for the observed cooperative mode is related to the impact of a volcanic eruption on global mass circulations. The study on the network topology of the atmospheric structure during a volcanic eruption provides a fresh perspective to investigate the impact of volcanic eruptions. It can also reveal how the interactive patterns of the atmosphere respond to volcanic eruptions and improve our understanding regarding the global impacts of volcanic eruptions.