According to a global group that monitors for atomic testing, the volcanic eruption in Tonga appears to dwarf the largest nuclear detonations ever conducted.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, Austria, which oversees an international network of remote monitoring stations, says that the blast was so powerful that it was detected as far away as Antarctica.
The low-frequency boom from the explosion was heard by 52 detectors around planet Earth. It was the most loud event the network had detected in more than two decades.
He says every station picked it up. It's the biggest thing we've ever seen.
Le Bras says that the explosion was not nuclear. The telltale sign of a nuclear explosion was not detected at any station.
The world felt the shock.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization was established in 1996 to monitor for nuclear weapons tests. The organization has set up an extensive network to watch for signs of a nuclear blast, even though the test-ban treaty has yet to be entered into force.
In the past, the network has picked up North Korea's underground nuclear tests.
The station is designed to detect nuclear weapons tests. The remote continent picked up on the power of the eruption.
Ctbto.
The volcano exploded on 15 January and all of the stations picked it up. It is possible to detect the rumble of far-off explosions with the help of Infrasound.
According to Le Bras, atmospheric measurements in Austria detected a shock that was two hectopascals in strength. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested, the Soviet Union's Bomba, generated a shockwave of just 0.7 hectopascals in New Zealand, which sits at a comparable distance from Russia's nuclear test site in Novaya Zemlya.
In other parts of Europe, similar readings were picked up.
The volcanic eruption in Tonga created a pressure wave that went over Europe.
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A 2.5 hPa measurement was made by a barometer in Switzerland. These facts remind us that we all share the same atmosphere.
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The World Meteorological Organization has a post on January 15, 2022.
Le Bras says the network can detect the faint echo of the shockwave as it circles the Earth's atmosphere again and again.
Le Bras declined to predict the size of the volcanic eruption in Tonga because of the rules against estimating the size of nuclear detonations. Margaret Campbell-Brown, a physicist at the University of Western Ontario, thinks it was as large as the 50 megaton Soviet test in 1961.
The back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the energy was around 50 megatons. It doesn't seem like it would be smaller, but we haven't done the real analysis that it would need.
America's "Ivy Mike" detonation in 1952 is the largest thermonuclear test, but the shockwave from the Tonga eruption appears to dwarf it.
The U.S. Department of Energy.
A previous estimate from a team of NASA scientists put the explosion at perhaps 6-10 megatons, but Le Bras believes the data shows the explosion might be much larger.
He thinks the estimates areunderestimating the yield.
The original estimate was made by Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
It's not the same as a nuclear explosion because it's a different process. The team's calculations are based on the amount of energy required to destroy the island. Since it first formed in 2015, that island has been closely monitored, and Garvin believes the group's calculations are accurate for the energy required to obliterate it.
He says the estimate is based on moving stuff. It doesn't include other forms of energy, such as the energy released by the water turning to steam as it touches molten rock.
He thinks it will take time to get a true estimate of the size of the eruption.
The explosion's origins were plumbing.
The cause of the explosion at the island remains a mystery. The root cause is believed to be a massive influx of seawater into a chamber filled with magma. The island had been growing rapidly as recently as December of 2021, and Garvin suspects that the "plumbing" beneath the surface shifted as the island expanded.
The island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai was destroyed. The energy needed to destroy it was estimated by NASA scientists.
Colleen Peters works at theSchmidt Ocean Institute.
Ken Rubin is a volcanologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He says putting rock and magma into contact won't cause an explosion.
Rubin says there's a golden ratio where you have the right amount of both. Water flashing into steam can expose more molten rock, allowing more water to flow in, in what he describes as a "chain reaction."
The explosion was so powerful that it's difficult to understand. The volcanologists think it was smaller than the Mt. eruption. Pinatubo was in 1991. The weather changed on a global scale because of the gases released by that eruption.
The extent of the eruption's effects on the island nation of Tonga are just now becoming clear. The government has reported three deaths, but many homes and other structures were damaged by a wave. The ground and water have been polluted by ash. Relief flights have begun to arrive from Australia with drinking water, but the government of the nation of Tonga is trying to limit contact because of fears about the spread of Covid-19.
Rubin says that there are shallow ocean volcanos around the globe, but they are not monitored. It's expensive to develop and maintain underwater instruments.
He thinks the eruption in Tonga may lead to more resources being devoted to studying and monitoring volcanic activity under the sea.
Rubin says that most of the volcanoes on the planet are in the ocean. "Many of them are very deep, but there are enough of these submarine volcanoes in this right depth range that we should pay more attention to them."
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