Hunga Tonga Eruption’s Hidden Trigger Revealed

New research from the Australian National University (ANU) has unveiled that the catastrophic Hunga Tonga eruption was triggered by an explosion from gas-compressed rock, challenging previous beliefs about magma-seawater interactions, SciTech Daily reported yesterday.

The eruption, which occurred in January 2022, is one of the largest in history. A team of ANU seismologists analyzed seismic records, revealing that the explosion’s energy equated to five major underground nuclear tests conducted by North Korea in 2017.

Co-author Dr. Thanh-Son Pham noted that the explosion caused a massive water surge, generating tsunamis up to 45 meters high. The volume of displaced water was enough to fill about one million Olympic-sized swimming pools.