Tonga - A Year Later

In January 2022, the largest volcanic eruption since Mount Pinatubo happened. And few people noticed.That’s because it occurred in the remote kingdom of Tonga, made up of tiny, sparsely inhabited islands in the South Pacific.But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. It produced the highest eruption cloud in modern times, and changed the way scientists view the interaction between volcanoes and the atmosphere.Here’s what happened: the volcano’s vent was 500 feet below sea level. As it erupted, the water column collapsed into it, where cool seawater met 2,000-degree-Fahrenheit magma and violently exploded into steam.This caused a self-perpetuating explosion: the steam would blow out the rock, tunneling farther down into the volcano. This exposed more magma, which vaporized more water, and tunneled farther down.By its end, the eruption had excavated 2,300 feet down, wiping out the entire volcano and two nearby uninhabited islands.It also created a water vapor cloud 36 miles that punched upward, into the high atmosphere.As the cloud cooled, it collapsed into the stratosphere, causing atmospheric shockwaves that circled the globe. These interacted with the ocean surface, forming fast-moving micro tsunamis, just a few inches tall, across the Pacific.Scientists will be studying data from Tonga for decades to come, to better understand both future and past eruptions.