Plumes from Tonga volcano highest measured
Plumes from Tonga’s deadly Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai volcano eruption were recorded as the highest ever seen, a new study has shown.
The underwater eruption on January 15 generated waves that swept up to 15 metres above sea level and destroyed everything in its path on the western part of Tongatapu and nearby islands.
It also generated air pressure waves that went around the world, and tsunamis that travelled around the Pacific basin. Three people died.
Research led by atmospheric scientist Simon Proud, published in the Science journal, found the eruption produced plumes of ash and water that reached an altitude of 57 kilometres at the highest.
Satellite images showed it plumed past the stratosphere and into the mesosphere.
This was the first time a volcanic plume has penetrated the stratosphere.
Prior to the Tonga eruption, the highest recorded volcanic plume from an eruption was from Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines, in 1991.
The volcanic eruption in Tonga was the biggest explosion ever recorded by modern sensors.
It was so powerful, the force lifted cloud over the United Kingdom and generated small tsunamis in the Mediterranean Sea.
A pair of research papers published in the journal Science in May found the eruption was far bigger than any 20th Century volcanic event.
The papers also compared it to atom bomb tests conducted after World War II and found they were dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of the blast.
Only the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 – which is thought to have claimed more than 30,000 lives – rivalled the atmospheric disturbance produced.