In a tweet last Friday, the World Meteorological Organization announced that the sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the La Soufriere volcano eruption in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is tracked all the way to India.
This has now fueled fears of increased levels of pollution in the northern parts of the country and acid rain – caused by the reaction of SO2 with water.
“Sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from the La Soufriere volcano eruption in the Caribbean have hit all the way to India,” the World Meteorological Organization said in its tweet.
The La Soufriere eruption on April 9 is one that, according to a statement from NASA, “bothers volcanologists the most” because unlike the other 45 currently erupting volcanoes around the world, it has an “explosion style explosive and inconsistent. ”
“What started as a dome of goopy lava slowly pushing from the summit crater in December 2020 has turned into something far more dangerous: several explosive eruptions,” said NASA.
“The eruptions sent large feathers of volcanic gas and ash high into the atmosphere. Occasionally overheated high-density material also raced across the land surface in landslide-like devastating events that volcanoes call pyroclastic flows. “
Ralph Kahn, a climatologist at NASA, explained that those volcanic feathers can lead to “aviation and air quality hazards.”
Further, it was explained that those volcanic feathers that arrive and remain in the stratosphere can begin to have a cooling influence on global temperatures.
“The current thinking is that a volcano needs to inject at least 5 teragrams (5,000,000,000 kilograms) of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to have measurable climate effects,” explained Tech volcano Simon Carn at NASA.
After about a week of explosive eruptions, according to NASA, satellite measurements show that La Soufriere has distributed about 0.4 – 0.6 teragrams of sulfur dioxide to the upper atmosphere.
That’s already more than any other Caribbean volcano produced during the satellite age and the amount of SO2 poisoned could increase if the eruption continued.
NASA scientists also concluded that moderate eruptions are usually much larger than massive eruptions and could have more cumulative impact.