Tonga eruption may have produced Statue of Liberty-engulfing tsunami: Report

(Japan Meteorology Agency via AP)

“This was a really large tsunami,” researcher and civil engineer Mohammad Heidarzadeh told Science News.

TONGA VOLCANO SPOUTED ENOUGH WATER TO FILL 58,000 OLYMPIC POOLS INTO STRATOSPHERE

The mound of water displaced by the eruption was around 7.5 miles in diameter and contained 4.1 cubic miles of water. The explosion also produced a global shock wave that generated even more tsunamis, a phenomenon the likes of which has only been recorded once: the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia. The pressure wave-generated tsunamis aren’t quite as big as gravity-generated tsunamis but are especially dangerous due to their speed, posing a significant challenge to many early warning systems.

The Jan. 15 eruption was caused when a large amount of seawater suddenly poured into a hot magma chamber within the underwater volcano, Heidarzadeh explained. The resulting explosion has been described as a once-in-a-century event.

The pressure wave generated by the eruption produced a sonic boom that circled the planet three times, according to scientists speaking with the New York Times. The force of the explosion was more than the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which produced an explosion the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT. The plume of hot gases and ash produced by the eruption reached a height of 36 miles, “likely the highest plume in the satellite record,” according to a NASA report.

Five people were killed by the tsunami, and there was around $90 million in damages, according to Science News, which largely attributed these relatively small numbers to the remote location of the Pacific volcano.

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Another phenomenon caused by the eruption of the volcano located 500 feet underwater was the injection of an almost incalculable amount of water vapor into the stratosphere. NASA scientists told NPR that the eruption sent the equivalent of 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of water into the stratosphere, which could take as long as a decade to dissipate. This has the potential to warm the planet further, alarming researchers.