It was a seemingly typical day on January 15, 2022, until the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted, unleashing a cataclysmic chain of events that shook the world.
The Pacific island nation of Tonga has virtually lost contact with the rest of the world after Saturday's volcanic eruption cut the country's Internet cable.
That eruption sent a tsunami across the Pacific Ocean, one that actually caused an estimated $6.5 million worth of damage around the Santa Cruz Harbor.
It was a seemingly typical day on January 15th, 2022, until the Hunga Tonga-hunga Haapai volcano erupted, unleashing a cataclysmic chain of events that shook the world. The resulting tsunami traveled around the globe, leaving destruction in its wake while a deafening sonic boom echoed not once but twice around the planet. But that was just the beginning as the eruption continued. A colossal plume of water vapor shot into the stratosphere, filling over 58,000 Olympic sized swimming pools. Now, over a year later, scientists have discovered something truly terrifying about the Tonga volcano. What are the consequences of that violent blast? Could it affect the entire planet? The answers will leave you on the edge of your seat. So keep watching until the end, because the most recent findings about this massive volcano will astound you. The depths of the ocean are often shrouded in mystery. But in December 2021, a submarine volcano named Hunga Tonga-hunga Haapai decided to make its presence known. A slow and steady eruption began slowly building towards a climax that would shake the world nearly four weeks later, in January 2022. This eruption was a force to be reckoned with, the largest recorded since the infamous Krakatoa in 1883. The eruption triggered a massive tsunami, with waves reaching up to 15m high that slammed into the shores of Tongatapu, Ioah and Haapai. The ash fall from the explosion covered at least five square kilometers, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The sheer magnitude of the explosion was felt across the world, with the sound heard as far as Alaska, a distance of over 6000 miles.
The resulting tsunami waves traveled across the Pacific, reaching as far as Russia, the United States and Chile. And if that wasn't enough, the eruption also ejected a massive cloud of ash, gas and water over 57km into the atmosphere, setting a record for the highest plume ever recorded from a volcano. When disaster strikes, the first casualty is often communication. In the aftermath of the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-hunga Haapai volcano, damage to undersea telecommunications meant that information from Tonga was scarce. But even without clear information, the destruction was evident. Surveillance flights conducted by the New Zealand and Australian Defence Forces on January 17th revealed the extent of the damage with houses, roads, water tanks and other infrastructure in disarray on the west coast of Tongatapu. The Ha'apai Island group and realizing the gravity of the situation, the Prime Minister of Tonga declared a state of emergency on January 18th and called for international assistance. Although the death toll was relatively low, with only three direct and one indirect fatality officially attributed to the volcano and tsunami, the disaster had a massive impact on the people of Tonga. Early government estimates suggest that 84% of the population, or 84,176 people were affected, especially by Ashfall. Around 3000 people were displaced. And although many returned to their communities, some families from badly affected islands are still on Tongatapu trying to rebuild their lives.
What happened that day a year ago was nothing short of remarkable. The previously unassuming Hunga Tonga-hunga Haapai volcano erupted with unprecedented force, unleashing a massive plume of water vapor mineral ash and gas into the atmosphere. The explosion was visible to scientists worldwide, thanks to the help of three weather satellites that captured the event in real time. One of the researchers who was particularly captivated by the mushroom cloud was Simon Prowd, an Earth observation scientist at the Stfc Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Prowd was the lead author of a new study that examined the plume and discovered that the Hunga Tonga eruption was unusual. Temperature measurements returned by Earth observation satellites suggested that the volcanic cloud had reached an unprecedented altitude, and its behavior puzzled scientists. When the cloud was developing, we were looking at the temperatures based on the satellite data, Prowd said. It went through the troposphere where the temperature decreases with height, and then it kept getting cooler, even though the atmosphere around it should have been. Getting warmer. To estimate the altitude and the volcanic cloud accurately Prowd realized that he would need to employ a new approach. Typically, scientists use satellite borne infrared sensors to measure the temperature of atmospheric phenomena and compare it with the surrounding atmosphere's temperature. This method works well for the troposphere, the layer closest to the Earth's surface, where temperature decreases with altitude.
However, in the stratosphere, the layer above the troposphere, which ranges from nine miles to 30 miles, 15 to 30km. Temperatures increase as the ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Therefore, Prowd had to devise a more creative method to calculate the altitude of the cloud accurately. Luckily, the eruption was observed by three different weather satellites positioned in geostationary orbit at around 22,000 miles, 36,000km above Earth's surface, providing prab with the necessary data to calculate the cloud's altitude using a method called parallax. This technique involves measuring the apparent distance to an object from at least two different locations and is commonly used to determine the distance to stars. Prowd had previously used Parallax to calculate the altitude of the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013. The Hunga Tonga Volcanic Cloud's journey was no ordinary feat, piercing not only through the troposphere, but also rising up through the stratosphere and finally settling in the mesosphere at a height of 35 miles. Prowd confirms that the cloud is the highest ever observed, breaking a record that has stood for over a century. Even Pinatubo, the iconic volcanic eruption of 1991, couldn't come close with its ash only detected at a height of about 25 miles. But what's more, Pinatubo's sulfur dioxide rich debris had a significant cooling effect on the climate, lowering it by one degree Fahrenheit. However, the sulfur dioxide content in the Hunga Tonga cloud was far less, and it is unlikely to have a comparable impact on the climate.
Prowd argues that the significant amount of water released by the eruption could even have a warming effect on the climate in the coming years. Furthermore, a new report has revealed something truly astounding. The Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022 set off over 25,500 lightning events in just five minutes and nearly 400,000in just six hours. This eruption broke all previous records and half of all the lightning in the world was concentrated around this one volcano at the height of the eruption. It's the most extreme concentration of lightning that we've ever detected, said meteorologist and lightning expert Chris Vygotsky. This discovery was made by Vaisala, an environmental monitoring company that tracks lightning around the world. Robert Holsworth, the director of the World-Wide Lightning Location Network, another lightning monitoring network, confirmed Vasily's findings and said that the Hunga eruption was absolutely impressive in its lightning activity. Lightning is typically associated with unstable atmosphere and requires warm and moist air, which is why it is often used as an indicator of the climate crisis. And a new study led by Louis Milan, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, delved into the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano released into the stratosphere. The findings suggest that the Tonga eruption is a rare instance of a volcanic event that injects a significant amount of water vapor into the stratosphere. Only two other volcanic events in the last 18 years have come close to releasing such high levels of water vapor at such altitudes.
However, the water vapor from those eruptions disappeared quickly. The Tonga volcano on the other hand, released a surplus of water vapor that could last for years in the stratosphere. This increase in water vapor could have an impact on atmospheric chemistry, which could hasten specific chemical reactions and in turn exacerbate the depletion of the ozone layer, albeit temporarily. The reason why the Tonga volcano injected an unprecedented amount of water vapor into the stratosphere is due to its underwater caldera being at the perfect depth about 490ft, 150m beneath the ocean surface, according to Louis Milan. If the caldera was shallower, there wouldn't have been enough super heated seawater to account for the observed stratospheric water vapor levels. On the other hand, if it was deeper, the eruption may have been muffled due to the immense pressures of the ocean's depths. The effects of the eruption are being felt worldwide as Australia has been hit with devastating floods in the past year. The eastern coastline has experienced. Extreme weather conditions leading to huge floods and record-breaking rains. Picture a year's worth of rain falling in just a single week, with northern New South Wales and southern Queensland receiving even more precipitation. It's been the worst flooding in Queensland since 2011 and the explanation behind all these events is the Tonga eruption. But how did it lead to such catastrophic flooding? The sheer amount of water vapor released into the stratosphere altered the weather patterns in Australia, which was already experiencing a La Nina weather cycle.
To understand how the eruption triggered the floods, it's crucial to look at what's happening in the stratosphere over Antarctica. The Hunga Tonga eruption had a significant impact on our planet's climate and researchers are still trying to piece together the puzzle. The eruption increased the amount of water vapor in the Western Pacific by 20%, which has caused the stratosphere over Antarctica to be colder than usual. This has intensified the polar vortex or the winds that spin around Antarctica, which in turn has affected one of Australia's climactic drivers, the southern annular mode. Sam. The intense westerlies have lingered closer to Antarctica, resulting in fewer cold fronts and less winds in southern Australia. However, this has caused regions along the East coast to receive stronger onshore winds, leading to more rain and the catastrophic floods that hit Australia in 2022. This sudden transformation from the destructive forest fires of the previous year is a testament to the Tonga Eruption's influence on the climate. But there are still many unanswered questions about the eruption, such as its exact impact on Earth's climate and why it erupted with such force after centuries of being dormant.