Volcano eruption in Tonga sets record in lightning rage

The eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga in the Tonga archipelago, which reached its peak on January 15, 2022, has been the subject of numerous scientific studies pointing out that the phenomenon is a record holder in explosive power. The most recent, published Tuesday (20) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, adds a new record: the most intense lightning rates ever documented in Earth’s atmosphere.

Research led by researchers from the United States revealed some even more frightening details about the event: According to the analysis, a total of 192,000 lightning bolts were struck over 11 hours in a dense cloud of ash and water vapor. This represents maximum lightning strike rate of 2615 per minute, This makes the event the most intense electrical storm in history.

In addition to the intensity, it also produced the so-called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption The biggest lightning bolts ever seen: 20 to 30 kilometers above sea level. In a note, volcanologist Alexa Van Eaton of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said: “This eruption triggered an overloaded storm like we’ve never seen before.” The cloud of ash, water and gas reached a height of about 58 kilometers.

Why did so much lightning occur in the Tonga explosion?

According to Van Eaton, the observations made in Tonga “show a new tool that shows we need to monitor volcanoes at the speed of light and aids the role of the USGS in reporting ash hazard warnings to aircraft.” tool only, but a combination of optical readings from satellites and radio signals compiled into a dataset.

Combining this data, the team simulated a lightning storm in real time. Thus, they were able to observe that the huge “volcanic smoke” (exploding pillar) produces floating oscillations at the top that result in gravitational waves. This “triggered enhanced turbulent particle interactions and high current electrical discharges at extraordinarily high altitudes. [que chegaram à mesosfera]”, says study.

Therefore, the research concluded that the unusual lightning activity was a combination of the massive eruption rate, the rapidly expanding umbrella cloud, and the massive entrainment of seawater that evaporated by the magma-water encounter within the “undersea chimney.” This phenomenon, known as phreatoplinian, had never been observed before. “It was breathtaking,” sums up Van Eaton.