Visualizing Lamb Waves From a Volcanic Eruption Using Meteorological Satellite Himawari-8

Abstract

The major eruption of volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai in Tonga on 15 January 2022 generated atmospheric Lamb waves that propagated over the world. This seemed the first volcanic Lamb wave event that was clearly captured by the state-of-the-art geostationary meteorological satellites. This paper provides visualization of the waves using thermal infrared images from geostationary satellite Himawari-8. The second time derivatives of 10-min interval images clearly illustrated the waves propagating at about 310 m s−1. The waves could be tracked for more than a week while they propagated five times round the earth. Automated wavefront identification illustrated nonuniform propagation speed. The signals in the satellite images well matched the surface pressure observations in Japan.