Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption was so large its shockwave reached space: report

A volcanic eruption in the South Pacific was so powerful that its shockwaves left the planet and reached space, new research shows. The 2022 underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai eruption, one of the most powerful in modern history, reached all the way into the atmosphere and beyond — shaking space as far up as satellites orbiting the Earth, according to a paper published in the AGU Advances earlier this month. Behind those reverberations were shock waves known as secondary gravity waves, which are generated when an eruption’s first shock waves come apart in the sky, according to Gizmodo .

The eruption, which occurred in the waters of the coast of the island Tongatapu, itself was enormous. The volcano sprayed a roiling cloud of gas and ash 31 miles in the sky, reaching well above the typical flying altitude of commercial jets and into levels of the sky where most weather is generated. But exactly how the eruption managed to rattle the sky was unclear to scientists, with a phenomenon known as “lamb waves” — planet-hugging waves generated in eruptions — being one of the primary theories before the latest paper proved it wrong.



The volcano blew its lid in January 2022 after lying submerged between the small islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Haʻapai. The eruption bridged the water between the two uninhabited islands, forming a land mass between them a bit more than a mile wide. The land bridge later collapsed and fell back into the ocean.

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