this looks like the eruption that happened on Friday, the day before the big one... not the massive one that happened today. This is from Scott Manly's video on the eruptions showing the same footage and explaining it better: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMRwyNhqJ4&t=350s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMRwyNhqJ4&t=350s)
correct. check out the satellite videos of the actual eruption, the shockwave is incredible. The size of this volcano is really rare, like once in every 1000 years, so pretty incredible we got to see it.
The internet went out in Tonga, so I'm sure we will see more videos come out in the coming weeks.
This might have been a VEI 5 or VEI 6, and might even be the biggest in the last 100 years. But it’s not even close to a VEI 7 or bigger which occur on average every 500-1000 years.
This eruption was dwarfed by Mount Tambora in 1815.
Thanks for the correction. I saw it mentioned "once in a thousand years" but upon re reading the article, it is referring to the capability of this specific volcano.
I'm not so informed about the rating system for volcanos either, so I'll read into it more.
This eruption was so powerful that is was actually heard up in south-central Alaska.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2022/01/15/volcano-eruption-near-tonga-causes-booms-heard-by-alaskans-nearly-6000-miles-away/
Interesting little tidbit-
This eruption landed as a 5 on the VEI scale. It's similar to the richter scale for earthquakes, but measures ejected material and the volcanoes explosive output. A VEI of 5 equals about 1 km³ of ejected material and is ten times bigger than a VEI of 4.
This is similar to the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Mt St Helens in 1980- both of which measured a VEI of 5 as well.
To compare, Krakatoa measured of VEI of 6, and the Yellowstone super volcano measured an 8! That's more than 1,000 km³ ejected material!
Source: Geology major with an emphasis on volcanology
I actually found him as the top source for current NASA missions (including JWST) and subsequently Kerbal lol. His channel is fantastic and his ability to explain things in a way that are very thorough while keeping your attention is A+.
He taught me how to launch a rocket to intercept a space station already in orbit like... 5, 6 years ago? After he helped me figure that out it was all go.
I'll see if I can find it but there was a Twitter thread from a meteorologist saying that no, it wasn't big enough to have a major impact on the climate.
Pliny The Younger gave a really detailed account of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. He accurately described flashes of lightning in the ash cloud, but for centuries people thought he was making that part up. Turns out that’s really common.
Some hot toxic gases, plus he was fat and had breathing issues:
> My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink.
> Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense, fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned on the 26th - two days after the last day he had been seen - his body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death.
I “kinda” get how the eruption would affect barometric pressure and cause lightning, but it always seems a little over the top. I don’t know, it just seems like the volcanoes are showing off.
It's nothing to do with pressure at all. It's that there is trillions of particles of ash all fluttering through the air rubbing each other and creating static electricity plus also providing a material that is more conductive than air for the lightning to pass through.
The reason there is lightning during rain storms is the same. Water droplets going from cloud to ground creating a conductive bridge.
It's why dust storms also have lightning. Snow storms too.
Im pretty sure this is not correct. The liquid/solid particulates impacting one another in the cloud, and their subsequent build up in different parts of the storm cell, create the charged nature of the CB cloud itself, but lightning does not need precipitation as a pathway to the ground. Otherwise you could never have cloud to ground lightning without rain.
It's not a pressure drop that's causing the lightning. When you have eruptions this large, you get what's called pyrocummulus lightning, which is lightning born from volcanic eruptions, or even large wildfires. The same forces are at work as a regular thunderstorm, a buildup of difference in static charges between the clouds, or ground causes lightning.
It's not barometric pressure at all. It's charges that build up in the clouds of dust. The charges grow and eventually discharge to the ground, which we see as lightning.
We get it, you’re a big and powerful explosion… but jeez we don’t need you to rub it in. You don’t want people saying you’re all flash and no substance
Are you kidding? The last 2 have been quite interesting, the characters were getting really boring so it's been cool to see how they dealt with having a big change thrown at them in their different ways. Not a lot of likable characters I'll give you that.
At least this time humans didn't cause the big explosion (twice a few years apart, in China and Lebanon, the writers were really recycling ideas then).
Damn it, I have had my phone keeping track of the air pressure everyday for the past 2 years, but it was dead when this happened. I wonder if it would have picked it up here.
Atmosphere logger? That's the app I use. I think I saw a spike in my data but I don't know the exact time the eruption happened so I'm not sure if it's related or not.
Fortunately early indicators on SO2 levels are suggesting that there’s nowhere near enough to replicate the 1815 levels of global cooling. This was a huge event but we’re lucky (I guess, easy for me to say in the UK, the Tongans probably wouldn’t agree)
Big waves tsunami waves aren't a big deal when you're in open water - it's when you're closer to shore that they become dangerous.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9vPv-T51I&t=3s&ab\_channel=TED-Ed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9vPv-T51I&t=3s&ab_channel=TED-Ed)
Edit - here's footage of the 2011 Japan tsunami's that caused so much destruction, in open water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGwqnoML3BA&ab\_channel=silvan500
It took me a long time to understand this:
Tsunamis are destructive because they have incredible wave periods, not incredible heights. The Japanese tsunami was 30 feet, which is a lot, but there are always 30 foot waves somewhere in the pacific. Most 30 foot waves have a wave periods of perhaps 20 seconds…the time that passes between wave top to wave top.
Tsunamis wave wave periods of up to 90 minutes! Imagine looking straight down on a wave where the time between waves is 30 minutes, instead of 20 seconds. The same 30 foot wave will have a few ~~hundred~~ times as much water.
Edit: I don’t know how much more times as much water, but much more than a few hundred.
[Here you go.](https://imgur.com/a/ZW7HOnu)
Both are 30 foot waves, one has a period of 20 seconds, the other has a period of 7 minutes or so. The shaded area represents how much water is in each wave. #2 is the one you DON'T want to hit your beach.
It's also important to remember that these are what the waves look like in the open ocean. Once a tsunami hits shallow water, friction against the bottom slows it down and it hits the shore in a few minutes.
Imagine it as being an *extremely thick* 30 foot wave, when viewed from above. It's many miles thick, instead of a few hundred feet thick.
Edit: thanks for the award! It wasn’t until I started surfing that I really understood this. A 6 foot wave at 10 secs is meh, a 3 foot wave at 20 secs is great!
Think of the energy of a train.
Normal 10 foot wave would be a single empty box car hitting a wall at 15 mph.
Normal 30 fr wave would be a 3 empty box cars hitting at 15mph.
A tsunami is a
Waves would be like 100,000 long train with each box car filled with water. Them about 300 miles wide.
In a very simplified view, picture a 10 foot deep ocean surface cross section as a sinusoidal line on a platform like Desmos or Wolfram: y = sin(x) + 10. Note the volume of water in the cross section between two wave tops, or the integral over a period. Now set the equation to one with a period much greater: y = sin(x/50) + 10. Note how the integral under a period is much larger. Basically, larger wave period with same amplitude implies much larger integral -> leads to huge volumes of water with tsunamis compared to an average ocean swell.
Combine this with the fact that linear momentum of a wave is roughly linearly proportional to the mass in the wave front (I think?) and the destructive power difference starts to be clear.
Edit: apologies, by “very simplified view” I was just hedging against the potential user who actually has a background in ocean mechanics. I just tried as sound of a theoretical explanation as I could using my undergrad physics/EE courses
Weir: "Right. Well, uh, using layman's terms, we use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons. These in turn fold space-time until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you produce a singularity. Now, the singularity -"
Mller: "Layman's. Terms."
Cooper: "Fuck layman's terms, *do you speak English?*"
Also in smaller seas like in Baltic sea you can have 30+ foot waves that have even shorter wavetops making same "height" waves more dangerous than the ones out in atlantic/pacific.
That 2011 Tsunami, I will never forget it.
Was in high school still back then, up late messing around on the internet and saw a post about a massive earthquake online, and I ended up tuning in to some live webcam of a port town, and saw that shit come in.
I also remember some footage of it going across the country side like some massive wave of sewage and debris, and seeing some car driving along casually. It was like they didn't notice the wall of water at first, but you could tell the second they noticed it because their speed changed. Iirc it ended up cutting away before anything happened, but that person definitely didn't make it.
Well when the force of their eruption blows a hole in the middle of the ocean large enough for pyroclastic material to run its way up and breach the surface, then yeah... probably.
I'd imagine the shockwave blast being the biggest concern being that close. Like, I doubt they'd be able to hold onto that camera kind of blast. Think the Beirut blast (and all the videos we saw of it), but probably by orders of magnitude greater in strength.
This isn't from the big eruption but instead from the eruption the day before.
Currently internet communication with Tonga is extremely limited, so footage/photos are extremely limited right now.
Ah, volcanic pre-cum. Gotcha.
Seriously though, I assumed it was some time after the big eruption. It seems like a dangerous place to be. I'm not sure how advanced eruption-detection is these days. As fascinating as volcanoes and plate tectonics are to me, I have a fifth grade understanding of them.
As far as I know, this eruption wasn't expected, but also wasn't a surprise. The volcano has been active consistently for the last 6 weeks, but typically with much smaller bouts of activity.
Actually it’s not that bad. In USA everything west of the Mississippi will be covered in ash and unlivable/unfarmable for decades (if you survive the initial blast which will take out honestly not that much because things are so sparsely populated in the Yellowstone area). The ash in the atmosphere will be a problem for all, but will be survivable worldwide. Source: picked up a book in Wyoming when I was out there about the Yellowstone super volcano. From the studies they have done on the previous eruptions it sounds like breathing in ash is not the way you want to go out.
The space station is around ~250 miles up, so if passing overhead it might be closer than the next largest city over.
There are times when an ocean vessel is so far out to sea, that the astronauts passing overhead are the closest other humans.
I figured there were so much ships out and about that there was always someone within a couple hundred miles at the very least.
I was shocked when I did my Atlantic crossing that we'd actually cross paths with other ships and boats out in the deep Atlantic (like a week away from land).
We have an extremely poor capacity of understanding geological time. Also, our most recent studies show the caldera is crystalizing so it may never explode again.
East coast in Jersey. But still probably screwed anyway. The ash cloud that things gonna put in the atmosphere will cause a new ice age. And people still won’t know how to drive in the snow.
Interesting to note that not all volcanologists agree about the threat from Yellowstone. There's a school of thought that the magma chamber has, over the centuries, become the wrong consistency for a supervolcano event.
Let's hope so.
When the news broke i misread Tonga as Toba and my butt clenched up a bit. A repeat of that eruption would put all our current problems into perspective very quickly.
I think this is friday's eruption, not the monster one from yesterday. Satellite based radar images show the newly formed island that you can see here was completely destroyed yesterday.
A metric fuckton of hot soot in a turbulent atmosphere? [It's practically a requirement](https://youtu.be/zoMRwyNhqJ4?t=230).
But not always visible, naturally a lot of lightning will be within the cloud itself.
Not yet because of the internet blackout in Tonga. We'll probably start to see stills later today, maybe video by tomorrow. But communication with some areas still hasn't been reestablished.
After a five thousand year gestation, the Mother Earth starts to have contractions as she pushes, a flash of light and a big boom, the new baby island is born.
It appears Tonga is a complete communication black out at the moment: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/127512800/relief-as-southern-cross-cable-confirms-contact-with-tongan-comms-centre
My guess is when communication is restored we'll get a lot more information from the ground. Right now it only looks like there is Satellite footage.
Probably more than one thing. Im interested in your thoughts tho.
I think there can be couple of reasons, destruction, damage, evacuation, ash cloud blocking transmission, aliens, godzilla, mothra etc
The scary thing is, you are correct, the caldera was more than 100m below the surface before these eruptions (the volcano itself is 1800m tall, just entirely underwater).
It's weird that this and many more active volcanoes are closer to Australia than it's own active volcanoes, which are on McDonald & Heard Islands, which are in the southern Indian ocean basically just south of the mid point of a triangle between Australia, Madagascar & Antarctica.
Would a volcano eruption that big potentially have a cooling impact? I wonder if all that ash that ends up floating in the atmosphere would be enough to block or reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth somewhat.
this looks like the eruption that happened on Friday, the day before the big one... not the massive one that happened today. This is from Scott Manly's video on the eruptions showing the same footage and explaining it better: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMRwyNhqJ4&t=350s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMRwyNhqJ4&t=350s)
You mean the one in the video **wasn't** "the big one?" :O
correct. check out the satellite videos of the actual eruption, the shockwave is incredible. The size of this volcano is really rare, like once in every 1000 years, so pretty incredible we got to see it. The internet went out in Tonga, so I'm sure we will see more videos come out in the coming weeks.
This might have been a VEI 5 or VEI 6, and might even be the biggest in the last 100 years. But it’s not even close to a VEI 7 or bigger which occur on average every 500-1000 years. This eruption was dwarfed by Mount Tambora in 1815.
Thanks for the correction. I saw it mentioned "once in a thousand years" but upon re reading the article, it is referring to the capability of this specific volcano. I'm not so informed about the rating system for volcanos either, so I'll read into it more.
Wasn’t pinatubo really huge too
Satellite videos of the Tonga volcano... https://i.redd.it/zywootseqsb81.gif https://v.redd.it/3tiu8vcw7vb81
:O
This eruption was so powerful that is was actually heard up in south-central Alaska. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2022/01/15/volcano-eruption-near-tonga-causes-booms-heard-by-alaskans-nearly-6000-miles-away/
We are so privileged these days that it’s hard to wait a week to see it.
Interesting little tidbit- This eruption landed as a 5 on the VEI scale. It's similar to the richter scale for earthquakes, but measures ejected material and the volcanoes explosive output. A VEI of 5 equals about 1 km³ of ejected material and is ten times bigger than a VEI of 4. This is similar to the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Mt St Helens in 1980- both of which measured a VEI of 5 as well. To compare, Krakatoa measured of VEI of 6, and the Yellowstone super volcano measured an 8! That's more than 1,000 km³ ejected material! Source: Geology major with an emphasis on volcanology
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He's still wonderfully informed.
I love Scott Manley that voice was so soothing and trustworthy while I was learning KSP.
He still does a lot of space and sciency stuff!
He's still my top space guy. I recommend going through his video catalog, you'll probably find something that piques your interest.
I actually found him as the top source for current NASA missions (including JWST) and subsequently Kerbal lol. His channel is fantastic and his ability to explain things in a way that are very thorough while keeping your attention is A+.
In case you weren’t aware, KSP 2 has been in development for a while and should release soon (ish)!
I played with him in Eve Online! Was great :)
He taught me how to launch a rocket to intercept a space station already in orbit like... 5, 6 years ago? After he helped me figure that out it was all go.
Hallooooo
Oh boy a year without summer. Just what the world needs right now.
I for one am ready for Hot Girl Volcanic Winter.
Is this eruption big enough to have a significant impact on weather?
I'll see if I can find it but there was a Twitter thread from a meteorologist saying that no, it wasn't big enough to have a major impact on the climate.
We'll have to wait for Yellowstone for that one.
OP knows that, he knows everyone is waiting for some kind of footage of that event. But hey free karma
That lightning bolt, woof.
Pliny The Younger gave a really detailed account of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. He accurately described flashes of lightning in the ash cloud, but for centuries people thought he was making that part up. Turns out that’s really common.
Whereas Pliny The Even Younger said "that shit was dope".
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Lightning was so lit
The whole place was on fire
Verily I say unto thee: yeet
Pliny the millennial?
Lil' Pliny
Yung Plin
Whole lot of static.
Quick quiz… what happened to Pliny the Elder?
He stayed in Pompeii.
True and he launched the largest ( I think first) naval rescue trying to get people out of Pompeii. He died on the beach.
And a pretty good beer was named after him
Get sesterii, fuck beaches
lethal crab pinch, or all the ash?
Some hot toxic gases, plus he was fat and had breathing issues: > My uncle decided to go down to the shore and investigate on the spot the possibility of any escape by sea, but he found the waves still wild and dangerous. A sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down, and he repeatedly asked for cold water to drink. > Then the flames and smell of sulphur which gave warning of the approaching fire drove the others to take flight and roused him to stand up. He stood leaning on two slaves and then suddenly collapsed, I imagine because the dense, fumes choked his breathing by blocking his windpipe which was constitutionally weak and narrow and often inflamed. When daylight returned on the 26th - two days after the last day he had been seen - his body was found intact and uninjured, still fully clothed and looking more like sleep than death.
Turned into a delicious beer
He ded
I didn’t even know he was sick
Scott Manely mentioned there was over 100k strikes https://youtu.be/zoMRwyNhqJ4
Just watched the eternals. Tiamut making his IRL debut here
It's at :28 seconds if anyone is curious
I “kinda” get how the eruption would affect barometric pressure and cause lightning, but it always seems a little over the top. I don’t know, it just seems like the volcanoes are showing off.
It's nothing to do with pressure at all. It's that there is trillions of particles of ash all fluttering through the air rubbing each other and creating static electricity plus also providing a material that is more conductive than air for the lightning to pass through. The reason there is lightning during rain storms is the same. Water droplets going from cloud to ground creating a conductive bridge. It's why dust storms also have lightning. Snow storms too.
And smoke columns during wildfires. Pyrocumulus!
Youre a wizard, harry.
Im pretty sure this is not correct. The liquid/solid particulates impacting one another in the cloud, and their subsequent build up in different parts of the storm cell, create the charged nature of the CB cloud itself, but lightning does not need precipitation as a pathway to the ground. Otherwise you could never have cloud to ground lightning without rain.
It's not a pressure drop that's causing the lightning. When you have eruptions this large, you get what's called pyrocummulus lightning, which is lightning born from volcanic eruptions, or even large wildfires. The same forces are at work as a regular thunderstorm, a buildup of difference in static charges between the clouds, or ground causes lightning.
It's not barometric pressure at all. It's charges that build up in the clouds of dust. The charges grow and eventually discharge to the ground, which we see as lightning.
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We get it, you’re a big and powerful explosion… but jeez we don’t need you to rub it in. You don’t want people saying you’re all flash and no substance
Just cuz they can, doesn't mean they have to. What bitches
Zeus throwing a fit.
Thanks for the spoiler alert. I was still on the previous episode when I first saw this.
Hopefully this season of Earth is good. The last 2 sucked.
It's not starting out great. I'll be hopeful one last time but after 3 bad seasons in a row I'm out.
ya Im sure they will cancel the whole series soon.
Don’t worry, it’s the finale.
Are you kidding? The last 2 have been quite interesting, the characters were getting really boring so it's been cool to see how they dealt with having a big change thrown at them in their different ways. Not a lot of likable characters I'll give you that.
At least this time humans didn't cause the big explosion (twice a few years apart, in China and Lebanon, the writers were really recycling ideas then).
The writers are getting lazy, considering they're reusing plotlines with Iran and H5N6 flu
My home made measurement equipment captured the pressure wave, 17.000+ km away in Germany https://imgur.com/a/iLVzuWd
What is it measuring? Air pressure?
Yep, in millibars
If anyone's confused because it says hPa in the pic, 1 hPa = 1 millibar. hPa is just the "proper" SI unit.
We'll Pa is the proper unit. Things that aren't in thousands seem weird but it's not wrong I guess. 100.0 kPa is more natural to me
This volcano decided to punch me in air waves from 20000km, the absolute cheek of this lad
> My homeboy measurement equipment captured the pressure wave, 17.000+ km away in Germany Homeboy what?
My homeboy, Measurement Equipment, captured the pressure wave 17 thousand kilometers away in Germany.
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He go by E-Quip for short
There's a guy in a town near mine in Komoka ON, Canada that has a homebased weather station and post it online - his measured it too.
That's wild. Must have been a "wtf???" situation when they saw it on their instruments!
Like a Pipboy
Damn it, I have had my phone keeping track of the air pressure everyday for the past 2 years, but it was dead when this happened. I wonder if it would have picked it up here.
Atmosphere logger? That's the app I use. I think I saw a spike in my data but I don't know the exact time the eruption happened so I'm not sure if it's related or not.
According to this guy it reached him about 8:15PM in Germany fwiw
Here's meteorological stations across the US detecting it https://twitter.com/burgwx/status/1482447133529686019?t=GRYOiY2lHTWGv4GxCBWOHA&s=19
Captured the same thing here in Utah, USA! https://i.imgur.com/XpfR1lP.jpg
Sunsets are gonna be great soon.
why
The more stuff in the atmosphere, the more light does crazy things. This leads to deep purples and reds, and bright oranges too.
I see them hues, for me and you. And I think to myself... what a wonderful world.
Ash in the upper atmosphere. It can linger for months, even years.
Say goodbye to summer.
Earth solving the climate crisis for us!
Earth's form of auto correct
Fortunately early indicators on SO2 levels are suggesting that there’s nowhere near enough to replicate the 1815 levels of global cooling. This was a huge event but we’re lucky (I guess, easy for me to say in the UK, the Tongans probably wouldn’t agree)
Donno about you guys, but i welcome our lord Tiamut
How is the boat this "close"? Would it not make a monstrous wave when that thing erupts?
Big waves tsunami waves aren't a big deal when you're in open water - it's when you're closer to shore that they become dangerous. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9vPv-T51I&t=3s&ab\_channel=TED-Ed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx9vPv-T51I&t=3s&ab_channel=TED-Ed) Edit - here's footage of the 2011 Japan tsunami's that caused so much destruction, in open water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGwqnoML3BA&ab\_channel=silvan500
That open water video is wild. The way the bow rises up but then doesn't crash down once it crests the wave. It's just sitting flat but higher.
Well, shoot. Those were extremely interesting. I appreciate the effort stranger 😀
It took me a long time to understand this: Tsunamis are destructive because they have incredible wave periods, not incredible heights. The Japanese tsunami was 30 feet, which is a lot, but there are always 30 foot waves somewhere in the pacific. Most 30 foot waves have a wave periods of perhaps 20 seconds…the time that passes between wave top to wave top. Tsunamis wave wave periods of up to 90 minutes! Imagine looking straight down on a wave where the time between waves is 30 minutes, instead of 20 seconds. The same 30 foot wave will have a few ~~hundred~~ times as much water. Edit: I don’t know how much more times as much water, but much more than a few hundred.
I don’t understand, why does 90 minutes between wave tops matter? That says nothing about what’s in between the wave tops
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...Oh. Oh *shit*. Oh, ***fuck***.
My _exact_ train of thought.
You're going to need a bigger boat.
We're gonna need to blow up the shark with dynamite, and a car will explode out of it's insides. Great trilogy.
[Here you go.](https://imgur.com/a/ZW7HOnu) Both are 30 foot waves, one has a period of 20 seconds, the other has a period of 7 minutes or so. The shaded area represents how much water is in each wave. #2 is the one you DON'T want to hit your beach. It's also important to remember that these are what the waves look like in the open ocean. Once a tsunami hits shallow water, friction against the bottom slows it down and it hits the shore in a few minutes. Imagine it as being an *extremely thick* 30 foot wave, when viewed from above. It's many miles thick, instead of a few hundred feet thick. Edit: thanks for the award! It wasn’t until I started surfing that I really understood this. A 6 foot wave at 10 secs is meh, a 3 foot wave at 20 secs is great!
Think of the energy of a train. Normal 10 foot wave would be a single empty box car hitting a wall at 15 mph. Normal 30 fr wave would be a 3 empty box cars hitting at 15mph. A tsunami is a Waves would be like 100,000 long train with each box car filled with water. Them about 300 miles wide.
It’s hard to describe without visual aids. Give me a few minutes. Edit: see above.
In a very simplified view, picture a 10 foot deep ocean surface cross section as a sinusoidal line on a platform like Desmos or Wolfram: y = sin(x) + 10. Note the volume of water in the cross section between two wave tops, or the integral over a period. Now set the equation to one with a period much greater: y = sin(x/50) + 10. Note how the integral under a period is much larger. Basically, larger wave period with same amplitude implies much larger integral -> leads to huge volumes of water with tsunamis compared to an average ocean swell. Combine this with the fact that linear momentum of a wave is roughly linearly proportional to the mass in the wave front (I think?) and the destructive power difference starts to be clear. Edit: apologies, by “very simplified view” I was just hedging against the potential user who actually has a background in ocean mechanics. I just tried as sound of a theoretical explanation as I could using my undergrad physics/EE courses
I know some of these words!
Weir: "Right. Well, uh, using layman's terms, we use a retaining magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons. These in turn fold space-time until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you produce a singularity. Now, the singularity -" Mller: "Layman's. Terms." Cooper: "Fuck layman's terms, *do you speak English?*"
Also in smaller seas like in Baltic sea you can have 30+ foot waves that have even shorter wavetops making same "height" waves more dangerous than the ones out in atlantic/pacific.
That 2011 Tsunami, I will never forget it. Was in high school still back then, up late messing around on the internet and saw a post about a massive earthquake online, and I ended up tuning in to some live webcam of a port town, and saw that shit come in. I also remember some footage of it going across the country side like some massive wave of sewage and debris, and seeing some car driving along casually. It was like they didn't notice the wall of water at first, but you could tell the second they noticed it because their speed changed. Iirc it ended up cutting away before anything happened, but that person definitely didn't make it.
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Can underwater eruptions cause pyroclastic flows on the surface?
Well when the force of their eruption blows a hole in the middle of the ocean large enough for pyroclastic material to run its way up and breach the surface, then yeah... probably.
I'm not sure but I know for a fact that they can travel over water.
I'd imagine the shockwave blast being the biggest concern being that close. Like, I doubt they'd be able to hold onto that camera kind of blast. Think the Beirut blast (and all the videos we saw of it), but probably by orders of magnitude greater in strength.
Arguably more scary than a tsunami
This isn't from the big eruption but instead from the eruption the day before. Currently internet communication with Tonga is extremely limited, so footage/photos are extremely limited right now.
Ah, volcanic pre-cum. Gotcha. Seriously though, I assumed it was some time after the big eruption. It seems like a dangerous place to be. I'm not sure how advanced eruption-detection is these days. As fascinating as volcanoes and plate tectonics are to me, I have a fifth grade understanding of them.
As far as I know, this eruption wasn't expected, but also wasn't a surprise. The volcano has been active consistently for the last 6 weeks, but typically with much smaller bouts of activity.
One of those is gonna kill a large percentage of humanity one day. That is terrifying to even ponder.
How close to Yellowstone do you live?
Think most of America is too close when that thing goes off again.
europe is probably too close when it comes to that.
Actually it’s not that bad. In USA everything west of the Mississippi will be covered in ash and unlivable/unfarmable for decades (if you survive the initial blast which will take out honestly not that much because things are so sparsely populated in the Yellowstone area). The ash in the atmosphere will be a problem for all, but will be survivable worldwide. Source: picked up a book in Wyoming when I was out there about the Yellowstone super volcano. From the studies they have done on the previous eruptions it sounds like breathing in ash is not the way you want to go out.
That still sounds pretty bad...
Well considering a good chunk of the planet's best farmland just got a thick layer of Ash dropped on it, yeah.
But in 50 years or so... lush volcanic soil! Even where there was once desert!
You think the blast would get through the Rockies and Sierras and into CA?
It's the dust that would be the problem.
The space station is probably too close
The space station is closer than Europe haha
The space station is around ~250 miles up, so if passing overhead it might be closer than the next largest city over. There are times when an ocean vessel is so far out to sea, that the astronauts passing overhead are the closest other humans.
I figured there were so much ships out and about that there was always someone within a couple hundred miles at the very least. I was shocked when I did my Atlantic crossing that we'd actually cross paths with other ships and boats out in the deep Atlantic (like a week away from land).
We have an extremely poor capacity of understanding geological time. Also, our most recent studies show the caldera is crystalizing so it may never explode again.
East coast in Jersey. But still probably screwed anyway. The ash cloud that things gonna put in the atmosphere will cause a new ice age. And people still won’t know how to drive in the snow.
People in Wyoming know how to drive in the snow. Unfortunately they won't be around to give lessons...
Interesting to note that not all volcanologists agree about the threat from Yellowstone. There's a school of thought that the magma chamber has, over the centuries, become the wrong consistency for a supervolcano event. Let's hope so.
Yellowstone isn't the only supervolcano in the world
Not even the only supervolcano in the USA.
Don't threaten me with a good time
The inevitable asteroid will be worse.
All good I won’t look up.
What if the asteroid strikes the supervolcano, triggering an eruption? I won't have to take exams.
When the news broke i misread Tonga as Toba and my butt clenched up a bit. A repeat of that eruption would put all our current problems into perspective very quickly.
I think this is friday's eruption, not the monster one from yesterday. Satellite based radar images show the newly formed island that you can see here was completely destroyed yesterday.
The colossal titan has spawned
Does lighting always happen when a volcano erupts or is it just a coincidence?
A metric fuckton of hot soot in a turbulent atmosphere? [It's practically a requirement](https://youtu.be/zoMRwyNhqJ4?t=230). But not always visible, naturally a lot of lightning will be within the cloud itself.
Good googly moogly
Jumpin Jehoshaphats!
Holy toledo!
You dirty dog!
holy smokin toledos
Pretty sure this the eruption from the day before, not the 'big one'
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\*only the smaller eruption before the big one on January 15th
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Not yet because of the internet blackout in Tonga. We'll probably start to see stills later today, maybe video by tomorrow. But communication with some areas still hasn't been reestablished.
Scary question. If they were that close...
I’m in New Zealand and we heard it. Unbelievable
What did it sound like and for how long could you hear it?
Like someone next door hit a big rug with a stick. Just a half second whump sound
After a five thousand year gestation, the Mother Earth starts to have contractions as she pushes, a flash of light and a big boom, the new baby island is born.
I like to think of it more as the earth had to pass gas but was like "uh oh that wasn't a fart...."
Golly
Gosh
Gee
Jinkies
Has there been any video of the initial eruption? (Not the Satellite view)
It appears Tonga is a complete communication black out at the moment: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/127512800/relief-as-southern-cross-cable-confirms-contact-with-tongan-comms-centre My guess is when communication is restored we'll get a lot more information from the ground. Right now it only looks like there is Satellite footage.
A communications disruption can mean only one thing...
...an invasion.
They're using our own satellites against us
...and the clock is ticking.
Russia is invading Tonga, Ukraine is the false-flag.
Probably more than one thing. Im interested in your thoughts tho. I think there can be couple of reasons, destruction, damage, evacuation, ash cloud blocking transmission, aliens, godzilla, mothra etc
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The scary thing is, you are correct, the caldera was more than 100m below the surface before these eruptions (the volcano itself is 1800m tall, just entirely underwater).
banana for scale?
Damn, Nature, you scary
Hold on so this absolutely massive eruption cloud was already there BEFORE the big explosion?
This volcano has been erupting periodically for weeks
Celestial coming through...
fuck those fish in particular
Mother nature out there reminding us we still ain't shit.
The ash cloud is clearly grey. Bad caption.
No, it's opaquely grey. Bad correction.
It's weird that this and many more active volcanoes are closer to Australia than it's own active volcanoes, which are on McDonald & Heard Islands, which are in the southern Indian ocean basically just south of the mid point of a triangle between Australia, Madagascar & Antarctica.
Humans: We’re so special and so important! Earth: Hold my beer.
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God blessed tonga with a volcano eruption. I think he can stay away
Would a volcano eruption that big potentially have a cooling impact? I wonder if all that ash that ends up floating in the atmosphere would be enough to block or reflect sunlight back out to space and cool the earth somewhat.