Extreme Eruption

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai is an underwater volcano located in Tonga, a nation made up of 170 islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. On January 15, 2022, the volcano erupted, flinging ash, rock, and water vapor more than 58 kilometers (36 miles) into the air. It was one of the most powerful eruptions on record.

The eruption created tsunamis in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. These large ocean waves killed several people and caused millions of dollars in damage in Tonga. The blast also created ripples in the atmosphere. Scientists used ground observations and satellite data to measure these atmospheric waves, which traveled around the world at least six times at nearly the speed of sound—1,240 km (770 m) per hour.

“This was a genuinely huge explosion,” says Corwin Wright, a physicist at the University of Bath in England who worked on this research. “We’ve never seen atmospheric waves going round the whole world before or at this speed.”