After careful data analysis, the Tonga volcano eruption was recognized as the largest of the 21st century, and it clashes with the largest eruptions ever recorded.
Having ejected material around 10 cubic kilometers (over 2 cubic miles) in volume, generating an atmospheric shock wave that circled the world several times and producing an ash cloud half the size of France, the eruption was equivalent in strength. to the cataclysmic 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.
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The researchers used a newly developed algorithm to identify the scale of the Tonga eruption, significantly reducing the amount of fieldwork and direct measurements required. The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) rating for the explosion was set at 6, with one such eruption expected once every 50-100 years.
The VEI peaks at 8 – eruptions that occur every 50,000 years or so. We haven’t had any of this for tens of thousands of years, scientists think, and these explosions can produce up to 1,000 cubic kilometers (almost 240 cubic miles) of ejecta volume.
Having an algorithm like this has the potential to be incredibly useful, bearing in mind that many eruptions happen in remote locations where there is not much equipment to measure the event directly.
What scientists now have is a vast network of hundreds of seismic monitoring stations; these can pick up ground reverberations very quickly, even over long distances. It is these seismic waves that this new approach uses to calculate the size of the eruption.
Furthermore, the algorithm is able to estimate the size of the volcanic eruption in less than an hour if enough data is available, which can help to assess the size of the resulting ash cloud – and how that cloud might affect the environment around it. .
The eruption in January 2022 – the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai eruption, to give its full title – destroyed 90% of the uninhabited island of Hunga Tonga Ha’apai, which only emerged in 2015 after another minor eruption.
Experts think the way the volcano exploded directly into seawater rather than in the open air may have something to do with the scale of the subsequent explosion, as well as the strength and distance traveled by subsequent tsunamis.
“Despite the unprecedented wealth of high quality and rapidly available scientific data, key quantitative parameters of the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption, such as its size compared to previous major eruptions, could not be quickly estimated with ‘standard’ monitoring algorithms. ”, the researchers mentioned in their published paper.
“This emphasizes the need to develop new approaches to analyzing instrumental observations.”
The researchers admit that their algorithm amounts to a “simple framework” for now, and that it could be refined in a number of ways in the future.
However, it is already capable of performing calculations in real time without a great computational effort. As data on more eruptions is collected, the algorithm can be further refined.
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