Tonga Volcano: 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai Eruption and Tsunami

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A volcano is a way through which magma and gases come out. The Magma that gets to the surface is known as lava.

 

  1. Tonga Volcano  

On the date of 20 December 2021, an explosion started on Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai, a submarine volcano in the Tongan archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean.

The eruption reached a very huge and heavy peak almost four weeks later, on 15 January 2022. Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai is 65 km (40 mi) north of Tongatapu, the country’s main island, and is a branch of the highly active Tonga–Kermadec Islands volcanic arc, a subduction zone expanding from New Zealand’s north-northeast to Fiji.

 

Tonga Volcano

 

The explosion gets to tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, American Samoa, Vanuatu, and along the Pacific rim, containing damaging tsunamis in New Zealand, Japan, the United States, the Russian Far East, Chile, and Peru. A minimum of four people were dead, some were harmed, and a few were left missing in Tonga from tsunami waves height of 15 m (49 ft) high. Two people drowned in Peru when a 2 m (6 ft 7 in) wave hit the coast. It was the biggest volcanic explosion in the current century and the biggest explosion since the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa.

NASA determined that the explosion was “hundreds of times more powerful” than that of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, The explosion was the biggest explosion measured in the atmosphere by modern devices, far bigger than any 20th-century volcanic occasion or nuclear bomb test. It is thought that in previous centuries, only the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 rivaled the atmospheric disturbance created.

 

  2. Is the Tonga volcano still erupting?  

This beginning explosion finished at 02:00 on 21 December 2021 at local time. Volcanic activity resumed, and on 25 December 2021, the island had enhanced in size on satellite imagery. As activity on the island reduced, it was announced inactive by the Tonga Geological Services on 11 January 2022.

 

Tonga Volcano

 

  3. Will the Tonga eruption affect climate?  

The Hunga Tonga volcanic explosion that quaked the South Pacific Ocean in January will not influence Earth’s climate in spite of releasing clouds of ash miles high into the atmosphere, a new study committed.

 

  4. Is Hunga Tonga a volcano?  

A highly active volcano. The Tonga volcano is called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, or just Hunga located about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the Tongan capital of Nuku’alofa.
Read Also: What is Plate Tectonics?

 

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