Hunga Tonga Heat

 

Hunga Tonga Heat

 

Last meeting, I talked about how Hunga Tonga has made fall through spring wet, and the rain was early this year in mid-August.  But seawater in the stratosphere doesn’t only make clouds and rain; it also makes heat, because water vapor is the most powerful and abundant of greenhouse gases, and in the stratosphere, it has few molecules in the way of infra-red heat reaching the ground.   

The first two years after the volcano blew 150 million tons of water into stratosphere, we had much hotter 100-degree-plus weather in July and August. But that heat showed up only on clear days, which one would expect.  This year, it happened on partly cloudy days most of the summer.  It reminded me of the weather in Arizona during monsoon season, and we have been getting more monsoon weather coming from the Southwest this year.

This makes me think that there is a bell curve to the amount of rain coming out of the stratosphere, and we are in the middle of the curve, if scientists are right that Hunga Tonga weather effects will last only five years.

The forecast for this winter calls for a warm winter with a lot more rain.

 

9-17-2025 2-minute Speech to Grants Pass City Council

Published at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and shared on Facebook and Nextdoor

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 Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener           541-955-9040                rycke@gardener.com