When a volcano in Tonga erupted on January 15, it gave satellites their first glimpse of a volcanic ash cloud in the mesosphere.
The largest volcanic eruption since satellites began monitoring our planet was the one in Tonga. As the Pacific volcano shot a burst of ash and gases into the sky, two weather satellites were passing overhead.
The eruption was captured every 10 minutes for 13 hours.
NASA scientists analyzed the satellite imagery to determine that the initial eruption of ash rocketed 36 miles high, breaching the mesosphere, the region where meteorites falling to Earth burn up and create shooting stars streaking across the night sky.
It took about 30 minutes to travel that high. A secondary cloud rose more than 30 miles. The two are visible in the satellite imagery. Dry conditions in the mesosphere caused the upper part of the plumes to turn to gas.
Kristopher Bedka, a NASA atmospheric scientist who specializes in extreme storms, said in a statement on Wednesday that the intensity of this event far exceeds that of any storm cloud he has ever studied.
According to NASA, the biggest volcanic eruption captured by satellites was Mount Pinatubo in 1991. It shot 22 miles above the Philippines, but fell short of reaching the mesosphere.
The volcano used to be completely submerged. In 2015, it erupted beneath the ocean and suddenly rose, creating a landmass that connected two islands.
A series of violent eruptions in January wiped out the newborn island and took off large chunks of the other two.
In populated islands nearby, homes, boats, and the fishing industry were destroyed by the eruption and the tsunami. Three people died after the eruption. The World Bank estimates that the event caused $90.4 million in damages.
Our brains use images from our two eyes, the same way Bedka and his NASA colleague used images from the two satellites. They compared the images from the satellites and the different angles at which they were taken to create a 3D profile of the plume. They developed a technique to study severe storms.
This eruption was made possible by the combination of volcanic heat and the amount of superheated water in the ocean. Bedka said that it was like hyper-fuel for a mega-thunderstorm and that the eruption generated an incredible amount of lightning.
The eruption caused 400,000 lightning strikes over the course of six hours.
That is what makes this significant from a meteorological perspective.
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