The ongoing volcanic eruption in Tonga began in December 2021, but it wasn’t until 5:15pm local time on January 15 2022 that the powerful explosion occurred. It generated an enormous cloud of ash, earthquakes, and tsunamis that reached as far as the distant coastlines of Peru on the other side of the Pacific. Now scientists are even looking for the effects of the eruption in space.
The eruption column reached the Earth’s stratosphere, the second layer of the atmosphere up from the ground. The sound of the explosion was heard thousands of kilometres away in Yukon Territory, Canada. And although below the threshold for human hearing, the pressure (sound) waves were even detected by barometers in the UK.
It seems that the eruption also appears to have generated a series of so-called “atmospheric gravity waves”, which were detected by a Nasa satellite, radiating outwards from the volcano in concentric circles. Scientists, including me, are now looking to see what impact these waves may be having in space. The purpose of our research is to better understand the top levels of the atmosphere, well above where the International Space Station (ISS) orbits, and in particular to what extent changes in it are driven by events on Earth (as opposed to the space environment). It could also help us better understand how technology such as GPS is affected by volcanic eruptions.
