The massive eruption of the Tonga submarine volcano in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year generated a blast so powerful it sent massive pressure waves rippling through the atmosphere and around the world. These waves are the fastest ever observed inside Earth’s atmospherereaching speeds of 720 miles (1,158 kilometers) per hour, a new study finds.
“This was a really huge explosion and really unique in terms of what science has seen so far,” lead study author Corwin Wright, a Royal Society University Research Fellow based at the University’s Center for Space, Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences of Bath in the United Kingdom, said in a statement (opens in new tab). Atmospheric waves caused by volcano (opens in new tab) is traveling at an unprecedented speed, “very close to the theoretical limit,” he said.
Wright and his colleagues published their findings Thursday (June 30) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab).
The volcano – known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai or simply Hunga – is located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa and lies within a line of volcanoes called the Tonga-Kermadec Volcanic Arc. on Jan. 15, Hunga erupted and sent a huge plume of gas and particles rising into the mesosphere, the third layer of the atmosphere above The Earthsurface. The plume reached 36 miles (58 km) high at its highest point, making it the largest volcanic plume (opens in new tab) in the satellite record.
Various ground-based and space-based monitoring systems recorded the eruption as it unfolded, and after the event, scientists around the world immediately began sifting through this wealth of data.
One research team found that atmospheric waves produced by Hunga rivaled those produced by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (opens in new tab) in Indonesia, one of the most destructive volcanic eruptions in recorded history. The waves produced by the two volcanoes are similar in that they reach similar amplitudes and wash over the planet the same number of times: four times in one direction and three times in the other. Another research team found that the Hunga eruption sent waves racing across the ocean, producing small, fast-traveling meteotsunamis — meaning a series of waves driven by air pressure disturbances — that appeared in the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean oceans.
And high above Earth’s surface, beyond the so-called Kármán line, which marks the edge of space about 62 miles (100 km) above our planet, shock waves generated by the eruption produced powerful winds of up to 450 miles per hour (720 km/h ), Space.com reported.
Now, using similar satellite data and ground-level observations, Wright and his co-authors have confirmed that the Hunga eruption was among the most explosive volcanic events in modern history. Their results suggest that the atmospheric waves produced by the volcano swept the Earth at least six times and reached speeds of up to 1,050 feet (320 meters) per second.
“The eruption was an amazing natural experiment,” Wright said. “The data we’ve been able to collect on it will improve our understanding of our atmosphere and help us improve our weather and climate models.”
