BJ Deming

Video: Hunga Aerosol Effects In The Sky (1741 UTC June 7, 2023)

June 7, 2023, 10:41 a.m., Pacific: I still haven’t been crepuscularly active with the camera again, but here is an update from a New Zealand weather enthusiast re: satellite observations:

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I have seen absolutely no one attributing any of the post-eruption and/or ongoing unusual extreme climate/weather events and their knockoffs to this injection of water into the upper stratosphere.

Of course we live in times where everybody feels that they need authority before they speak. The old Asimov “Huh! That’s weird…?” paradigm is not in effect at present.

So I’m going to anticipate future papers and say that a “wet” upper stratosphere can cause these localized extremes down at the surface. How? No one knows — yet.

Someday, after the West Coast snow pack has finally melted, the East Coast urbanites have cleared wildfire smoke out of their air passages, and people in many parts of Europe (and elsewhere) have either quenched their terrible thirst or developed gills and interdigital webbing, it might become socially and professionally acceptable once again to say “That’s weird, and I don’t know what’s causing it.”

And then learning and new discoveries will once again be possible.

Update, May 1, 8:43 p.m., Pacific: No film, just a check-in for 2023. The winter rains are clearing and the post-sunset glow, those few times I’ve seen the sky out my window seems brighter and a little more extensive along the northern horizon (the only one I’ve checked thus far).

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September 6, 2022, 5:30 a.m., Pacific: Thought I had updated this, but apparently not, so here is the August 11th pre-dawn video, when I noticed that both “sun-dog” effects were present.

And August 21:

I am not conscientiously following this daily but do note changes as I happen to see them.

As for today, it’s now a little past 5:30 a.m., but that’s when I looked out and saw the two “sun-dog” glows (the right, or southern one being a little red-orangish) PLUS an equally faint but clear whitish glow in the center, where the sun will eventually rise (not to be confused with the normal predawn lightening as dawn progresses).

The full effect — long before the sun will rise!

At this time of year, it was too faint to film with the Tracfone. I am going to pin this again, as I’m surprised no one else has mentioned these spectacular effects this far north yet. Perhaps someone will come across this post and look away from their glowing artificial screen for a moment, upwards, and see what wonders the real Earth and atmosphere and star are doing daily right above our heads.

Having read this recent open-access paper, I now think these effects are due to water in the upper stratosphere, which could have gotten to this latitude this quickly, if I understand the authors correctly.

The big question is what, if any, climatic effect that stratospheric water will have globally (some changes have been unofficially noted in the southern hemisphere) — definitely a Sunday Morning Volcano post in that at some point!

Posts from earlier this summer

This morning I happened to wake early again and noticed a “rainbow dawn” effect in the northern sky — again at the left “sundog” position.

This simple Tracfone camera doesn’t do it justice. While faint, there were all the colors from red near the horizon to orange to yellow to green to blue and then very faintly to purple.

In the north.

The “dawn” then progressed, as true dawn approached, to an unusually broad glow all along the horizon from true north to as far east as I could see from my window.

I suspect that morning glow extended far SSE, because the sunsets (which are unobstructed by weather clouds now that we’re in our Mediterranean-style clear, hot season) have been lengthened into a very intense, long-lasting orange glow after sundown that ranges from true north to far into the SSW horizon.

I didn’t film those sunsets, assuming that scientists are doing it continuously and with much better equipment, but here are this morning’s videos (barring an unexpected boom in book sales, I am about a year and a half away from getting good equipment and some training in its use, so please be understanding of the amateur quality):

Playlist of all videos to date (11) updated, September 5, 2022. Here is YouTube link.

June 23, 2022: I wasn’t planning to take any more videos but happened to wake up this morning around 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. Then I noticed that the effect seemed even stronger (though still nothing like that’s being reported Down Under).

So here’s three more views taken between roughly 4 and 5 a.m. Of note, during playback of the second, longer video, I noticed green bars and that is artifactual, as is some of the purple/green shifting with camera movement.

This is why I included that third video, shot on another model Tracfone — to compare and see how much of the color might be real. Both cameras did seem to cut through humidity that sort of dazzled the eye, but it’s not 100% reliable.

You might want to take a sea-sickness pill before watching the third video. That model really wasn’t up to the shoot. The autofocus was nuts and 30-some apps crashed.

The main things are on the first two, relatively clear videos: The incredible brightness in the north and the way color and glow moved around. (Of note, I have since briefly read up on stratospheric winds — they’re speedy, so I can’t think how they could contribute to the imbalanced “sundog effect.”)

But yes, this morning Corvallis got a “sunset” in the north and then a sunrise in the east. (Here’s the link, in case that playlist hasn’t processed yet.)

Original post:

This morning was clear and for the first time I was able to record some optical effects from the sulfate aerosol stratospheric layer formed after Hunga’s January blast.

For reference, the videos were recorded at 44.57°N, 123.27°W. Times given are in the Pacific Time Zone.

Per the GVP, Hunga is located at 20.536°S, 175.38°W.

This is extremely amateurish video, recorded when I was half awake on the only equipment available: a new Motorola Tracfone (higher definition) and the old Samsung Tracfone.

The narration is repetitious because I thought I hadn’t saved the earliest two videos. Fortunately, they were there and I eventually found them.

Time ranges from 4:51 a.m. to 6:18 a.m. These are episodic, not totally accurate in color, and without any attempt at professional editing. (Also, the narrator babbles, as is her wont — sorry.)

My goal is merely to get people to look up! That came naturally to people in Krakatoa-1883 times, but now we’re fixed on these glowing screens.

Like this but without fear or stress. There wasn’t enough sulfur in the blast to cause serious climate changes.

Once skilled videographers realize that Nature is putting on some major sunrise/sunset FX, there should be some spectacular professional videos appearing online.

In the meantime, there’s this:

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