Why is there a purple sunset? The real cause is surprising to everyone!

"A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause a big storm in Texas," says Edward Norton Lorenz, father of the hugely popular "Butterfly Effect" theory.

In fact, few people understand the "Butterfly Effect" literally, because it is really hard for a butterfly to flap anywhere. This theory is actually used in weather forecasting, which is highly sensitive to change, implying that even a negligible variable will deviate from the original estimate.

Purple sunset.

However, sometimes the " Butterfly Effect" still happens on a large scale, as the picture below is an example. It is the bright purple light, taken in Rocky Mountains, United States.

Volcanic eruptions from the other side of the world

In June 22, 2019, Russia's Raikoke volcano suddenly exploded violently. The eruption pushed a dense layer of volcanic ash, filled with gas straight into the atmosphere, large enough to be viewed from the ISS Space Station.

The eruption did not cause any damage, nor was it considered a disaster. But it turned out, the effect caused by this event spread far beyond anyone's imagination.

Smoke from a volcanic eruption viewed from above.

2 months later, photographer Glenn Randall from Colorado (USA) took a tour of the Rocky Mountains and obtained a beautiful image. It was a sunset with a bright purple sky , reflected on the calm surface of the lake. And Randall is not alone, because then many people in the United States have also noted the phenomenon of such bright sunsets and sunsets in the past few months.

What are the 2 related events? Absolutely yes! According to experts, the eruption on June 22 is what created the violet light on the other side of the world.

In August, experts at the University of Colorado dropped weather balloons at high latitudes, with the function of measuring aerosols (also called aerosols) and other particles in nature at high altitudes. about 20,000 m in the western region of Wyoming. They found that the aerosol layer in this area was 20 times higher than normal since Mount Raikoke erupted, and it was this gas that scattered the Sun's rays, creating the fantasy of the sunset above.

This phenomenon shows that a small volcano eruption can also affect the other half of the world. The Raikoke explosion itself is quite normal, but according to experts, if another larger volcano also explodes, a serious effect will occur.

"A truly exploding large volcano will have a huge impact on humanity, and that's what we are not prepared to deal with" - quoted Lars Kalnajs, expert from the Atmospheric and Air Laboratory Space (LASP).

To see the purple sunset, the perfect combination of time and weather conditions is needed.

Take the example of Tambora volcano erupting in 1815. The event then emitted an enormous amount of ash, accompanied by 60 million tons (megaton) of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, causing the whole Earth to be pitch black and causing The weather phenomena are very unpredictable.

It was the largest eruption in modern history, causing temperatures worldwide to drop by 3 ° C. The following year was considered "no summer", and the reduced heat caused the deaths of 80,000 people due to insufficient food to survive.

The most recent was the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 - the 2nd largest explosion in the 20th century, emitting 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide and also causing global temperatures to drop by 0.5 degrees Celsius in 2 years. .

According to Kalnajs, Raikoke's recent eruption reminds us that collecting data from volcanoes is extremely important."When a volcano erupts, we have to collect data very quickly. We need to know if the eruption affects hundreds of thousands of other people around the world."

The people watching the purple sunset are very lucky

According to Kalnajs, such a purple sunset needs a perfect combination of time and weather conditions. Just volcanic ash will not be enough, so those watching the purple sunset are really lucky.