An immense volcanic eruption shook the Tonga archipelago, in the Pacific Ocean, on January 15, 2022, leaving a historic mark on Earth.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted and caused the largest explosion ever recorded on the planet. This eruption also left a trail of destruction in space.
But recently, researchers led by Atsuki Shinbori and Yoshizumi Miyoshi made a surprising discovery when they realized that the eruption even impacted satellites telecommunications company in orbit around the Earth hundreds of kilometers high.
According to scientists, the volcanic eruption created plasma bubbles in the ionosphere, an outer layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, near the Equator, damaging telecommunications and GPS systems for an extended period.
Despite the impact, telecommunications did not suffer significant losses.
Irregularities in the ionosphere began before the eruption
Photo: Reproduction
Furthermore, the researchers were surprised to find that the irregularities in the ionosphere could have started minutes or hours before the atmospheric pressure waves from the volcanic eruption.
This is exactly the opposite of what was imagined. In other words, through this discovery, the models that explain the interaction between the different layers of the atmosphere and the geosphere must be revised.
This research can contribute to improving space weather predictions, mitigating the effects of natural disasters and encourage the strengthening of the telecommunications network, making it more resistant to any disturbances in the ionosphere and the upper layers of the atmosphere.
The eruption at the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano
The eruption in Tonga was a volcanic spectacle unprecedented since the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, and only comparable to the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. The event generated tsunamis that reverberated in Japan, the United States and Chile.
The volcano released clouds of gas and ash to heights of up to 58 kilometers. The resounding sound of the explosion echoed two thousand kilometers away, in New Zealand. In Tonga, waves reached an impressive twenty meters high.
According to data from NASAthe magnitude of the explosion was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. After the explosion, the island Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, which had been formed by the union of two smaller islands, Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai, disappeared.
