From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Yesterday, around 0400 UTC 15 January (8 PM PST 14 January), there was a massive, explosive eruption near Tonga, in the southern tropical Pacific, about 5642 miles from Seattle (see map).
The volcano was clearly evident in satellite imagery from the massive ash cloud (see below, about 1-h after the eruption)
The explosive eruption created shock waves in the atmosphere (pressure waves) that rapidly propagated away. These waves are evident in some infrared (water vapor channel) imagery as concentric rings (shown below).
The oceanic eruption also pushed away a massive amount of water, which created a tsunami on nearby islands (such as Tonga) and deep water waves that moved away at the speed of a jet plane, reaching the West Coast this morning. This is why some local tsunami warnings went out this AM.
The Pressure Wave Reaches the Northwest
Local barometers indicated a well-defined pressure wave passing over our region around 4:30 AM this morning. Here in Seattle, the University of Washington barometer showed the feature, with an amplitude of roughly 2 hPa (2 mb). The arrow indicates the feature. Very impressive.
So it took about eight hours and 30 minutes to go about 5643 miles–thus a speed around 664 miles per hour. This corresponds to the speed of sound in the upper atmosphere around 30,000 ft. Makes sense.
The water wave moves slower, around 400 mph (and occasionally approaching 500 mph)….so a later arrival was expected. Thus, at Neah Bay, at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the water wave arrived around 9 AM (17:00 UTC as shown on the chart), as indicated by the waviness in the water level after that time. The amplitude of the variation is around 2 feet.
If you really want to be impressed, check out the same figure at Monterey, California. Just wow. The amplitude was up to 3-4 feet.
An amazing event and one that shows how interconnected our planet is–both in the air and in the water.
Worldwide, plants are cheering.
In addition to CO2, there’s something I read about ash dimming the sun but creating more indirect light (a brighter sky) that helps plants.
Is this something I’ll be seeing on Deadliest Catch?
Lived in the Kingdom of Tonga for 8 months in the mid 80’s. Wonderful place. Fantastic diving.
From memory Tonga is an ancient massive volcano a couple of hundred kms across at the surface that has slumped into the ocean as its weight depressed the seafloor. When we sailed by the central islands one of them was mildy erupting at the time.
Given the force of the blast as seen from space this could have significant consequences for Tonga.
Not quite . This erupting volcano is because they and some others lie on an arc above a continental plate which has another plate diving under it another to form the very deep Tonga Trench
The main island of Tongatapu isn’t volcanic origin at all, being low lying coral limestone origin and is away from the vulcanism of the plate boundaries
Maybe the climate alarmists should consider that there are actually real existential events that could occur at any time, like Yellowstone…
From 2016… The Guardian says climate change can cause earthquake, tsunamis, and volcanoes.
– – – – – – – – –
“How climate change triggers earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/16/climate-change-triggers-earthquakes-tsunamis-volcanoes
“A previous eruption on Friday sent plumes of ash and smoke into the air, with smoke clouds extending up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) into the atmosphere.”
Tsunami warning in the West Coast. Really? Get over yourselves. Hardly a big deal, is it? Still unsure if this was sub-aerial or submarine. I am reminded of the effect of Krakatoa on UK public, drummed up by the activist official media of the day. More important, what happened on Tonga?
Precautionary Principle.The foundation stone of Progressivism. Fear tsunami, fear the virus, fear the buffalo-head guy entering the Congress.
There are some places in Northern California and are susceptible to and have suffered from Tsunamis. Crescent City got flooded in 1964 with 11 deaths (20-foot water surge). Got hit again in 2011 but not as badly. Was there on work trips a few times and they took it seriously.
I’ve been searching the web for the projected VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) of this Tonga eruption, but I haven’t been able to find any official estimates yet.
Looking at the scale of Tonga from satellite imagery, it has to be at least a VEI 5 (between 1KM^3~9.99KM^3, and could even be a VEI 6 event.
Regardless, whether it’s VEI 5 or 6, it will very likely cause some global cooling for a year or two, due to an increase of stratospheric volcanic particulates blocking some solar irradiance, until gravity and precipitation eventually remove it from the atmosphere.
An amazing event.
P.S. Japan completely overreacted, and my damned iPhone was automatically blasting out a very loud tsunami warming every 15 minutes from about 11 PM to 3 AM… even though the beach area where I live only had a tiny 20cm tsunami…
News reports say these excessive tsunami alarms were caused by a software glitch in the auto-Alarm system… Oh, goody..
Well NZ under reacted no warning, just damage.
Boat in Marinas have had real problems.
Turbid water around here but thankfully fish still biting.
Asleep at the wheel
But her toothyness sure has the China virus under control, and your whole country under lockdown.
Yes, Japan overreacted to COVID, but It’ll soon return to normal once this omi-cold wave is over.
I’m all for early warning tsunami warnings, but not in areas not affected.
There were islands of Okinawa Prefecture that suffered 2 meter tsunamis, but most of Japan was unaffected.
No tsunami injuries in Japan were reported, which is great news.
Maybe a ‘novel’ form of tsunami then. Surely it needs a name …can’t call it Tonga Tsunami however, origin can’t be mentioned
Update:A volcanologist out of NZ predicts the Tongs eruption was an VEI 5 event making it the largest since the 1991 Pinatubo eruption which was a VEI 6 event.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/459657/tonga-eruption-likely-the-world-s-largest-in-30-years-scientist
Predicted: a global temp decline of 0.9°C. That’s approximately the increase since 1880.
There goes the Hockey Stick!
Welcome to the Tongan Little Ice Age.
Mike-san: Recent predictions put the Tonga eruption at a VEI 5 event, so there will be some global cooling but not a lot.
NASA calculated the VEI 6 Pinatubo eruption (10+ times stronger than Tonga) caused 0.6C of global cooling, so Tonga will likely only cause around a 0.1C of global cooling, which is negligible.
We’ll see soon enough.
Undersea volcano could be measured differently? , and most Ash has fallen in open ocean
Since a relatively limited amount of ejecta ended up in the atmosphere, there won’t be much of cooling effect.
Pinatubo’s ejecta into the atmosphere was over 10 times that of Tonga’s so the global cooling will be minimal.
Also, since an El Niño cycle will likely start at the end of this year, there will be some ENSO global warming starting again later this year and all of next year.
Thats because a mostly land based eruption can be far better measured. The closest large island is 70km away, Pinatubo could be watched from say 10km
This clearly is unmeasurable …at the moment, maybe some years later
How interesting! I checked my personal weather station record (on Weather Underground as KORMILLC2) and verified that I also had a small pressure spike near the same time. It ramped up from 30.34″ at 4:04 AM, to 30.38″ at 4:25 AM, and then ramped down to 30.33″ at 4:49 AM (times are PST and my station records pressure in inches of Mercury).
Distance to Tonga is about 5,560 miles, so that fits nicely with the UW barometer reading at a location some 80 miles more distant from Tonga.
It’s too bad that my barometer doesn’t have the fine precision of the UW barometer.
The release of ash can generate a strong pulse of Fe in the oceans it depends on the ash cloud composition being dependent on the provenance of the magma.
The outcome can be a massive absorption of CO2 and fish production, does anyone know anything about this? Or the likely Fe content.
I went back to the records on my PWS from yesterday and was surprised to discover that it recorded a 1mb jump at 0419 from the shock wave of the volcano. (I’m in Portland OR)
Good info! More on this topic, Please!
Has Mikey Mann yet claimed this was the volcano he was waiting for to validate his “theory” that there are no ocean cycles?
The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in between Tonga and New Zealand sent shockwaves across the South Pacific. Here is the full video of the eruption from the Tongan Navy.
https://youtu.be/qc8cLF8ZDPg
Just for the record the volcano is part of Tonga (as the name suggests) and New Zealand is over 2000kms away.
Here’s a baro plot from my personal weather station. You can see the first pressure spike at about 4AM yesterday morning, and a second one about 1AM this morning. I don’t know if the 2nd spike is a bounce (as happened several times with the Krakatoa eruption) or a second eruption.
Note: the pressure values are corrected for diurnal atmospheric tides, so the absolute pressure values are not what an uncorrected barometer would show.
P.S. This was measured in northern Calif.
Just one more thing interesting to consider. Where molten lava flows into the ocean, it reacts vigorously with sea water to create large, acidic steam plumes containing HCl and HF gas. Since the final blast was underwater to begin with, it seems logical that some of the HCl and HF gas condensed directly in the ocean, and the rest produced extremely acid rain (likely SO2 was created, as well) in the immediate area.
So according to all the ‘acidification of the ocean’ horror stories, this should produce an extremely toxic environment for all ocean life in the immediate surroundings. Any bets what a survey of life vs pH levels would look like over the next six months? Keep in mind, too, that carbonic acid has a pH around 5.7. These acids have pHs closer to 2.
Here is a presentation by Scott Manley, it’s got a lot of sat imaging.
Volcanic Eruption May Be Biggest Ever Seen From Space – YouTube
It would be interesting to see if the ash cloud has any impact on global solar and wind power generation in the next year or two.
Cliff has some of the best information on the internet and is always authentic science based on data.
If people got vaccinated, we wouldn’t have Climate Change causing eruptions like this one
Some more detail on the undersea volcano and caldera that was the origin of this massive eruption
https://theconversation.com/why-the-volcanic-eruption-in-tonga-was-so-violent-and-what-to-expect-next-175035
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/tonga-volcano-eruption-and-tsunami-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-to-give-latest-update-on-tonga/
People managing to commuicate by various means with outside world Ash covering much of area it seems. Ash cloud dissipating in upper atmosphere
so for Aus we get great sunsets and a cooler winter hopefully with good rain whats not to like;-)
Climate Scientists discuss the Tongan sea-level surge (16.55-18.40)
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2213H011S00
If anyone is still watching this post, I’ve now seen what I believe are four atmospheric pressure wave bounce (plus the main spike from the eruption), the latest at about 2:20AM PDT in northern Calif.
The time intervals between the eruption and each pressure wave I’ve seen in hours are 7.75 20.70 13.60 22.60 13.50.
The chart below from my personal weather station has atmospheric tides with periods of 6,8,12 and 24 hours removed — it’s much easier to identify the spikes that way. There are X-axis ticks at each of the suspected pressure wave spikes.