NASA Data Show Volcanic Eruption, Not Man-Made Climate Change, Likely Cause of Record Heat Wave

Agency says that water vapor injected into the atmosphere from a recent volcanic eruption was enough to increase Earth's global average temperature //

“It turns out that levels of water vapor in the atmosphere have dramatically increased over the last year-and-a-half, and water vapor is well recognized as a greenhouse gas, whose heightened presence leads to higher temperatures, a mechanism that dwarfs any effect CO2 may have,” Thomas Lifson, founder of American Thinker, wrote in a July 31 op-ed.

“So, why has atmospheric water vapor increased so dramatically? Because of a historic, gigantic volcanic eruption last year that I — probably along with you — had never heard of,” he added. “The mass media ignored it because it took place 490 feet underwater in the South Pacific.”

According to NASA, when the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted last year, along with producing a sonic boom that circled the globe twice and a tsunami, it “blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere — enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere

NASA cited a study published in Geophysical Research Letters showing that an estimated 146 teragrams (one teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor was sent into the atmosphere, which is equal to 10 percent of the water already present in that atmospheric later. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL099381

Other data published in the journal Nature estimate the rise in global stratospheric water mass following the volcanic event at 13 percent. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00652-x

As the space agency, which also tracks global temperatures, readily admitted on its own webpage, “The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.”