An international team of researchers from the United Kingdom and New Zealand has identified that the most powerful eruption of the underwater volcano named Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai, in January 2022, generated the fastest ocean currents ever measured. The findings appear in a study published in Science [Citation: Science journal].
The eruption hurled debris, including rocks, ash, and gas, across the seabed at speeds reaching roughly 122 kilometers per hour. Volcanologists reconstructed the motion of this material by analyzing the timing and locations of damage on a catastrophically compromised submarine cable, providing a rare, data-driven view of the eruption’s immediate near-field effects [Citation: Science journal].
The researchers also reported that the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai event lofted volcanic debris into the atmosphere to an extraordinary altitude, peaking around 57 kilometers above the planet’s surface. The energy released by the eruption was described as comparable to the combined output of hundreds of atomic bombs, underscoring the event’s extraordinary scale [Citation: Science journal].
Additionally, climatologists and atmospheric scientists noted that the explosion disturbed the Earth’s ozone layer by injecting vast amounts of water vapor, creating a measurable hole in the stratosphere. This observation contributes to understanding how large underwater eruptions can influence atmospheric chemistry and climate dynamics [Citation: Science journal].