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Low sulfur emissions from 2022 Hunga eruption due to seawater–magma interactions

Nature Geoscience volume 18, pages 518–524 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The explosive January 2022 Hunga submarine eruption in Tonga injected unprecedented water volumes into the upper atmosphere, generating widespread climatic impacts. However, it ejected anomalously little sulfur compared with other eruptions of similar volume. We explain the missing sulfur with volatile budgets calculated from volcanic ash samples spanning the eruption. We show that magma was stored in a weakly stratified reservoir at 2.1 km to >5.6 km depth. Magma rose within <3 min and fragmented at 400–1,000 m below sea level. This preserves microscale chemical mingling including ~1 wt% contrasts in magmatic water concentrations. The 11-h eruption released a total of 319 Tg of magmatic water, which is <10% of that derived from magmatic seawater interaction. Comparing magmatic and residual glass sulfur concentrations shows a total release of 9.4 TgS, but >93% of this entered the ocean during submarine magma fragmentation. These results raise the concern that satellite SO2 monitoring underestimates the magma output of submarine explosions and they are probably near invisible in ice-core records, despite their climate influence caused by water injection into the upper atmosphere.

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Fig. 1: Composition of melt inclusions and matrix glass for the Hunga eruption.
Fig. 2: Sulfur variations in microlite-poor matrix glass.
Fig. 3: Water concentrations in Hunga magma.
Fig. 4: H2Ot profile across the boundary between two melts.
Fig. 5: Conceptual Hunga eruption model and S and H2O budget.

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Source data for this paper are provided in Supplementary Tables 1–6 and are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28665107 (ref. 68).

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Acknowledgements

R. Almeev and F. Marxer (Leibniz University Hannover) are acknowledged for providing Raman glass standards. This research is financially supported by New Zealand Government Ministry of Business (Innovation and Employment Endeavour Research Program UOA24103), Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi (Marsden project MFP-UOO2218), Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Australian Synchrotron and the New Zealand Synchrotron Group (project M18638), the Korean Polar Research Institute (project PE22550) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (for D.G.-G.).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jie Wu, Shane J. Cronin.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Jie Wu, Shane J. Cronin, Ingrid A. Ukstins, David Adams, Joali Paredes-Mariño, Kyle Hamilton & Mila Huebsch

  2. Department of Geology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Jie Wu, Marco Brenna & James D. L. White

  3. Korean Polar Research Institute, Incheon, Republic of South Korea

    Sung-Hyun Park

  4. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy

    Alessio Pontesilli

  5. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Kyle Hamilton & Chris Firth

  6. Institute of Earth System Sciences (Section of Mineralogy), Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hanover, Germany

    Diego González-García

  7. Department of Mineralogy and Petrology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Diego González-García

  8. School of Earth and Environment, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Alexander R. L. Nichols

  9. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Terry Plank

  10. Australian Synchrotron, ANSTO, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Jitraporn Vongsvivut & Annaleise Klein

  11. Department of Geological Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA

    Frank Ramos

  12. Tonga Geological Services, Nuku’alofa, Tonga

    Folauhola Latu’ila & Taaniela Kula

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Contributions

Conceptualization: S.J.C.; methodology: J.W., S.J.C., I.A.U.; sample collection: S.J.C., F.L., T.K., S.-H.P.; data collection: J.W., S.J.C., I.A.U., D.A., J.P.-M., K.H., M.H., D.G.-G., A.R.L.N., J.V., A.K.; formal analysis: J.W., S.J.C., M.B.; funding acquisition: S.J.C., M.B., S.-H.P.; supervision: S.J.C., M.B.; writing–original draft: J.W., S.J.C., M.B.; writing–review and editing: all authors.

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Correspondence to Shane J. Cronin.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Microscopic images of melt inclusions in different host mineral phases.

Mineral hosts include olivine, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene and plagioclase.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Compositional variations with changing Mg# in melt inclusions and matrix glass associated to different mineral phases from Hunga samples.

a, SiO2. b, CaO. c, Na2O. d, K2O. e, Al2O3. f, TiO2. g, P2O5. h, Cl. Mg# = molar Mg/(Mg + Fe2+) × 100.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Plot of the ratio between molecular water (H2Om) and hydroxyl (OH) vs total water (H2Ot) in matrix glass from Hunga pyroclasts.

The density of overlapping data points are indicated by the colour code for n = 812 analyses.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Frequency histogram of S concentrations in microlite-poor matrix glass from Hunga.

a, Subaerial samples covering the whole 2022 Hunga eruptive stages (n = 1,112). b, Submarine samples (n = 168). Kernel density estimate (KDE) curves are shown. Below detection limit (~30 ppm S) concentrations were found for 186 analyses in a and for 30 in b.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Frequency histogram of Raman H2O concentrations in microlite-poor matrix glass from Hunga.

a, Subaerial samples covering the whole 2022 Hunga eruptive stages (n = 161). b, Submarine samples (n = 56). KDE curves are shown. Below detection limit (~0.1 wt% H2O) concentrations were found for nine analyses each in a and b.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Calibration line for quantification of H2O concentration by Raman spectroscopy (n = 14).

Error bars represent 2 SD uncertainty of several measurements of Rw/s by Raman (n = 3–4) and H2O concentration by Karl Fischer Titration (KFT, n = 2) and/or FTIR (n = 4). Some error bars are smaller than the plot symbol. \({C}_{{{\rm{H}}}_{2}{\rm{O}}}\) is given in wt% (Methods).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Measured vs predicted clinopyroxene DiHd components for Hunga samples.

Predicted values calculated from post-entrapment crystallization (PEC) corrected melt inclusions.

Extended Data Table 1 Sample information and analytical methods
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Tables

Six supplementary data tables including major element and volatile compositions for Hunga pyroclasts and standards.

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Wu, J., Cronin, S.J., Brenna, M. et al. Low sulfur emissions from 2022 Hunga eruption due to seawater–magma interactions. Nat. Geosci. 18, 518–524 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01691-7

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