What’s in Florida’s atmosphere? There’s a plume from Hawaii’s erupting Mauna Loa volcano
Floridians are used to hearing about rain, hurricanes and the occasional plume of Saharan dust.
What’s not so common in Florida? Having a plume of sulphur dioxide over the state, courtesy of Hawaii’s erupting Mauna Loa volcano.
“The sulphur dioxide from the #MaunaLoa eruption in Hawaii is right now in the sky above Florida,” WINK News Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
Mauna Loa, the highest active volcano in the world, began spewing lava on Nov. 27 for the first time since 1984. Sulphur dioxide is a common colorless gas volcanoes release when magma is near the surface. The gas, which has a strong odor, can also be released into the air by certain human activities like coal burning.
And just like with Saharan dust, the wind can take the plume to other parts of the world.
Devitt retweeted a graphic from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, which analyzed satellite observations to illustrate where the plumes of sulphur dioxide traveled from Nov. 28 to Dec. 5. The graphic shows the plumes heading east over the Pacific Ocean, toward the North American mainland, crossing the southern United States and northern Mexico, before heading into the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea.
Computer models show the plume of sulphur dioxide “will be swirling aloft until at least the weekend,” but this will be “highly dependent on upper air wind patterns,” Devitt told the Miami Herald.
In Hawaii, officials are cautioning that volcanic emissions, including sulfur dioxide, could lead to vog, which is vocanic smog, and affect people’s health, aggravating asthma and other respiratory conditions. However, if you have the sniffles in Florida, you likely can’t blame the volcano.
Copernicus, the atmosphere monitoring service, noted in a blog post that the traveling sulphur plumes are “well above the surface,” and that there is “no significant incidence on air quality or other major impacts in the atmosphere.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2022 at 3:09 PM with the headline "What’s in Florida’s atmosphere? There’s a plume from Hawaii’s erupting Mauna Loa volcano."
