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The 15 January 2022 eruption of the submarine Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai (HTHH) volcano (Tonga) ranks among the largest volcanic explosions of the satellite remote sensing era, and perhaps the last century. It shares many characteristics with the 1883 Krakatau eruption (Indonesia), including atmospheric pressure waves and tsunamis, and the phreatomagmatic interaction of magma and seawater likely played a major role in the dynamics of both events. A portion of the HTHH eruption column rose to lower mesospheric altitudes (~ 55 km) and the umbrella cloud extent (~ 500 km diameter at~ 30-35 km altitude) rivalled that of the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, indicative of very high mass eruption rates. However, sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions measured in the HTHH volcanic cloud (~ 0.4 Tg) were significantly lower than the post-Pinatubo SO2 loading (~ 10-15 Tg SO2), and on this basis we would expect minimal …