Tomographic retrievals of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic aerosol

The 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano caused substantial impacts on the atmosphere, including a large increase of stratospheric aerosol at high altitudes and a massive injection of water vapor.  We show results from application of a two-dimensional tomographic retrieval of aerosol extinction profiles from limb scattered sunlight made by the NASA OMPS Limb Profiler instrument. The tomographic retrieval substantially improves the agreement in magnitude and vertical structure with coincident lidar and occultation observations compared to the standard retrieval. We also show a secondary effect of bias from uncertainty in assumed particle size distribution parameters that results in a systematic underestimation of the aerosol extinction in the altitude region of the peak of the volcanic aerosol layer.