An international team of scientists from the United Kingdom and New Zealand has found that the most powerful eruption of an underwater volcano off the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai islands in January 2022 created the fastest ocean currents ever recorded. To work published in the journal Science.
Due to the eruption of the volcano, streams of stones, ash and gas were scattered on the sea floor at a speed of 122 km / h. Volcanologists calculated the dynamics of their movement using information about the time and location of damage in the catastrophically damaged underwater cable.
The scientists also found that the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai explosion hurled debris into the atmosphere to a record height of 57 km, and the energy released during this time was comparable to the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of atomic bombs.
Former meteorologists discoveredThe eruption of the underwater volcano Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai opened a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer due to the enormous release of water vapor, he said.