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How big was the Tonga eruption?
- michilehr 5y agoMy cheap weather station has recorded the blast wave three times. https://michilehr.de/the-eruption-of-hunga-tonga-volcano-and-its-blast-wave-around-the-globe https://michilehr.de/the-eruption-of-hunga-tonga-volcano-and...
- phist_mcgee 5y agoI find the mix of your commas and periods in numbers a little confusing. >305,8 m/s but also 8.7m and ~1.4 hPa. I know that Europeans have a different notation to Americans, but is there a rule here I am missing?
- tacker2000 5y agoNo, there is no missed rule, the comma is the only official decimal separator in these parts. But I can relate to the the OP. Us here in the comma world are forever converting numbers in CSV and Excel files back and forth so as to display them in a proper number format. It’s like that darned USB port, you have to flip it 3 times to get it right.
- nameistaken 5y agoThis should be the grand compromise. The US will convert to metric, however everyone else has to convert from commas to decimal points. Places using decimal separators and the metric system are the real winners here.
- Bilal_io 5y agoI'll celebrate for a whole week whenever the US converts to the metric system. I hope I'll still be young enough to handle it.
- r00fus 5y agoSince it's a big "moat" for parts manufacturing (mainly for defense industry)... I predict the USA will give up imperial units when it's empire finally collapses. Perhaps in the next few decades as China builds its own economic sphere.
- denton-scratch 5y agoUm, it's unamerican to use "imperial" units. When you have a revolution, you have to get rid of all things imperial! Therefore US pints are 16oz, not 20oz, and so on for most fluid measures (fluid ounces are based on dry ounces, which are avoirdupois, not imperial).
- r00fus 5y agoWe kept linear measurements the same (feet, yard, miles). So it's a bit of a stretch to say we're not imperial. I'd say it's "US imperial".
- denton-scratch 5y agoI was about to comment that feet, yards and miles are not imperial measure; but I checked, and WP says they are in fact imperial units. So i learned something today.
- not2b 5y agoCarter started a transition to metric in the 1970s and Reagan killed it. It became a nationalist thing to keep it.
- michilehr 5y agoNo missed rule. Thank you for your feedback. I have replaced the decimal separators '.' with ','. Sorry for the confusion.
- smoe 5y agoGrowing up in Switzerland with a dot as the decimal separator, I newer knew just how much of an outlier we are in this part of the world until now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:DecimalSeparator.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:... We also use apostrophe as the thousands separator, so: 1'234'567.89 which I personally always found much more readable that using commas and dots. Is there any other country that uses this combination?
- manquer 5y agoWhile OP here made a mistake, some countries use mixed systems depending on what it is used for . Switzerland for example uses comma for normal numbers and dot for currency alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Examples_of_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Examples_of_...
- El_RIDO 5y agoNice! Mine caught it as well. https://social.dssr.ch/display/47b62552-9461-e5ad-2f0a-4e2619911821 https://social.dssr.ch/display/47b62552-9461-e5ad-2f0a-4e261...
- vmception 5y agoThese are totally memeable gifs Reminds me of the “problem solved” pictures California, Florida, the Koreas, Israel, Somalia? These are totally intentional examples for the memes aka for the lulz I’m saving all these before other people notice
- milliams 5y agoThe title is ungrammatical and refers to "states" where the article does not.
- giuliomagnifico 5y agoWrite a better tittle and I’ll change it. By the way for me Spain, Florida or UK are states, how you call them?
- riffic 5y agothe article does not refer to "Nations" either (the phrase used in the Reuters text is "well-known land masses"). title nitpicking is one of the worst things about HN (and there are many things wrong with this site), imo just use the original title.
- sixstringtheory 5y agoTonga eruption as if it had* happened in various nations
- giuliomagnifico 5y agoEdited, thanks a lot for the correction! English is not my first language!
- ketzo 5y agojust so you know, you are correct to call Florida and California "states."
- NikolaNovak 5y agoInteresting; on aside, I would call: Florida - State Ontario - Province Spain & UK - "Country" colloquially; might use the term "Nation" if I needed to be more inclusive/ambiguous (Understanding that formally, State might in fact be a better term: e.g. it's "Minister of the State" or "Statesmanship" etc; but this is how I'd use them in daily life. ESL, 25 years in Canada FWIW)
- fghorow 5y agoFor western US trained geoscientists, the Bishop Tuff [1] (from the ~750,000 years ago eruption of the Long Valley Caldera, near Mammoth Mtn. in California) is a "modern" comparable ashfall deposit. This was quite a bit larger (edited to add: I meant in areal extent, not necc. volume erupted). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Tuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Tuff
- dheera 5y ago
- riffic 5y agoyou could make your point without being derisive and ableist, especially considering the people involved have credentials and are trained in their fields.
- dheera 5y agoBut it creates "engagement" which is rewarded these days apparently. Also, I thought the trained people should have learned a thing or two from Pompei not to build near volcanoes. I'll cut some slack for the people who designed Pompei, they didn't know, but everyone after that should have learned.
- cyberlurker 5y agoPompeii was a Pyroclastic flow not lava.
- dheera 5y agoOK, I meant more like "dangerous hot shit that wipes out everything in its path" in a general sense. If someone gave me a contract to build something in modern-day Herculaneum I would say no. I think it's irresponsible to build there. In terms of lives lost it's tantamount to knowingly shipping a hundred 777s with loose screws that cause them to crash. The number of downvotes on this thread is also exactly why we have disasters with volcanic eruptions. This is like the geological equivalent of a bunch of antivaxxers.
- dylan604 5y agoThis looks like a tedious process that I would have totally done on my own had I thought of it. By that I mean the painstaking process of matting out each frame, then randomly placing it on places of the map, just because I could, just for the lulz. I'm not discounting it as "i could have thought of that", but appreciation for how useful it actually is. Some people cannot grasp certain things without visuals, and this visual is one of those that definintely makes things clearer.
- NikolaNovak 5y agoFWIW: * I think visuals are great for illumination overall, some people not withstanding :) * I think they also used semi-transparent shadow
- lelandbatey 5y agoYes, they did use transparent shadows. You can tell because the images are not GIF's, they're actually a sequence of PNG images overlayed atop other PNG images. There's the base satellite image of the area, then the frames-of-explosion-with-transparency overlayed atop them. You can confirm this by right clicking on the image and choosing "open image in new tab", which will (usually) open this final frame in a new tab. [0] - https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/cdn/images/plume-images/plume-510-md.png https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/cdn/i...
- bt1a 5y agoI tried to save one of the "gifs" to share with a friend and was quite upset that I found myself with a png. Interesting technique. Do you think this was done to have better quality animated images? GIF compression isn't amazing (relative to WebM at least)
- capitainenemo 5y agoI mean, they could have used APNG at this point. https://caniuse.com/apng https://caniuse.com/apng Doesn't compress stuff like that super well but no worse than a sequence of PNGs. I feel if you're gonna use JS animation anyway, you could just use 2 jpegs, one for masking and a canvas. Hm. Webp is doing darn well these days too. https://caniuse.com/webp https://caniuse.com/webp Avif isn't an option yet.
- herpderperator 5y agoDid the the ocean influence the ease of expansion of the explosion? Or hinder it? We are comparing an underwater explosion to one on land, and I'm wondering if it's directly comparable.
- mytailorisrich 5y agoFrom what I've read it seems that the ocean exacerbated the explosion: the hot magma caused water to vaporize and created a steam explosion. I've read about a 70x volume expansion and that the top altitude of the plume was steam. On the other hand, the ocean might have captured some of the ash (?)
- Retric 5y agoIt should have also significantly reduced the temperature of the resulting ash cloud which reduced the quantity of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere. Which presumably reduces how much short term global cooling you get from the eruption.
- CoastalCoder 5y agoI'm curious if this would cause a noticeable change in the pH of those waters, and if that could be a good basis for estimating how much ash was captured.
- zo1 5y agoI wonder how many tonnes of fish got destroyed, cooked, or otherwise thrown many kilometers into the air.
- datavirtue 5y agoThat sounds delicious
- OneLeggedCat 5y agoI was thinking that too about whales and birds. Some species are found only on/around an island or two, like many of the Galapagos species.
- Zash 5y agoWhat I'm curious about is whether this was equivalent to, or larger than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa Also whether it will turn the sky red for months.
- phreeza 5y agoMy understanding is it's smaller even than Pinatubo, which happened in living memory, and significantly smaller than Krakatoa.
- jcims 5y agoPeak power is roughly equivalent to that of Pinatubo apparently. The main difference is the duration, which was much longer for Pinatubo.
- chris_va 5y agoThe estimate is about 20x smaller
- samcheng 5y agoWe have had really beautiful sunsets here in Northern California for the past week. Maybe related? (We also have a winter wildfire in Big Sur that could be contributing.)
- markdown 5y agoNah, the ash cloud went westwards towards Australia.
- metalliqaz 5y agoI think if there was another Krakatoa, it would eclipse Covid in the news cycle for weeks.
- dragonwriter 5y agoKrakatoa is estimated at 200 MT energy, this was estimated as 6 MT.
- silisili 5y agoWill this have a cooling effect on the Earth this year? I seem to remember global temperatures fell after the big one in the Philippines.
- api 5y agoIs this going to make our weather measurably colder for the next year?
- woodruffw 5y agoIt'll apparently have a slight cooling effect on the southern hemisphere[1], lasting until this spring. [1]: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/459707/tonga-eruption-could-have-cooling-effect-on-southern-hemisphere-scientist https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/459707/tonga-eruption-co...
- boringg 5y agoPretty cool way to look at it. My take away ... Florida is almost as big as Britain? Wow, I didn't realize how small Britain was.
- azinman2 5y ago… or how big Florida is.
- boringg 5y agoI already knew the size of Florida :)
- throw_nbvc1234 5y agoAs an American who enjoys soccer, it's crazy when you then overlay the entire football pyramid onto Britain. I don't see how USA soccer (MLS, grassroots, lower leagues ect...) could ever be like the "ideal" of how things are done on the other side of the ocean.
- munificent 5y agoYes, these images are incidentally an excellent reminder to Europeans of how big the United States is. I read a lot of criticisms of the US from people overseas that seem to rest on a lack of understanding of the scale of the country. The US is huge. A volcanic plume that covers most of Britain or Spain would only cover about half of California. You can wrap your head around it using "Measure distance" in Google Maps and comparing some in the US to Europe. Some examples: - ~1,200 km will take you from London to Valencia. You can fit a straight line that long just in California or Texas. - Miami to Seattle is about as long as Gibralter to Moscow. Tronheim in the Arctic Circle is closer to Cairo than Seattle is to Miami. - Paris is closer to Tehran than San Diego is to Bangor.
- sveme 5y agoBit similar to how everyone misunderstands the size of Africa. Here's a nice toy to play around with for a couple of hours: https://thetruesize.com https://thetruesize.com So it makes sense to compare the US to Europe as a continent. Got it. What kind of criticism have you read that is wrong due to a misunderstanding of the scale of the US?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rosstex 5y agoI would like to see, "MEDIA COVERAGE OF Tonga eruption compared as if it had happened in various Nations". Because apparently no one knows anybody who lives in Tonga with a camera, but damn that high tide at the Berkeley marina was crazy!!
- excitom 5y agoTonga's Internet connectivity was knocked out by the blast and it won't be back for a while, thus making it hard to upload pictures. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/tonga-likely-spend-month-without-internet-cable-2022-01-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/tonga-likely-spen...
- goodcanadian 5y agoThe submarine cable connecting Tonga to the world was severed. While satellite connections exist, apparently the ash cloud interfered with that as well. It has been extremely difficult/expensive to get any pictures out of Tonga.
- BookPage 5y agoI have a great aunt who lives in Tonga - my Grandma spoke to her a couple days ago. Apparently people on the main Island (Tongatapu) are mainly fine - her main issue is a bunch of ash on her roof, which apparently is going to cost for $500 to get removed from local tradespeople.
- unethical_ban 5y agoThe gif time-lapse gives me some anxiety - it reminds me of the Sega game Space Harrier where the enemies come at you quickly, within a few frames.
- RowanH 5y agoHeard it go bang, 2600km away, echoing through the hills around our place at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. That's pretty staggering to think about it. Then to see other peoples Home Assistants around the world pick up the change in pressure on opposite sides of the planet. Mental, just mental...
- belter 5y agoTalk about long distance effects.... "Tonga volcanic eruption shockwave reached the Netherlands" https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/16/tonga-volcanic-eruption-shockwave-reached-netherlands https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/16/tonga-volcanic-eruption-shockw...
- wiredfool 5y agoThere was a report from a climate org in Miami that they recognized the pressure pulse 9 times, once each ~35 hours since the eruption.
- depereo 5y agoMy colleague's backyard weather station picked up the pressure wave in Christchurch several times as it repeatedly circled the globe. Sea levels in the upper south were a little 'odd', trending higher and more variably than usual, even if not by that much, for a week.
- jmspring 5y agoHere in California in the Sierra Nevada, a pressure variation was noticeable around 4am pacific.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoHadn't thought of that. Just checked the data from my weather station, and there's a definite spike, followed by a drop. 30.16 inHg just before, 30.19 spike followed by an immediate drop to 30.14, then basically normalized again.
- maxdo 5y agowill the area of eruption eventually become an island?
- pas 5y agoit was a caldera explosion (hot magma + water = steam) the island is basically gone: https://twitter.com/defis_eu/status/1483020866258714625 https://twitter.com/defis_eu/status/1483020866258714625?
- cletus 5y agoSomeone else estimated the Tonga explosion at 10 megatons [1] and it was heard thousands of miles away. Bear in mind, humans have detonated nuclear weapons larger than this, most famously the Tsar Bomba [2] at 50 megatons. Compare this to something not that long ago: Krakatoa, estimated at 200 megatons [3]. Then compare this to the Year Without Summer (536 AD) [4]: > Falling in the time known as the 'Dark Ages', the year 536 AD fully embraced this moniker as Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia were plunged into 24-hour darkness for 18 months. Summer temperatures plummeted between 1.5-2.5°C causing crops to fail and millions to starve to death. All of this has happened in the last 10,000 years, which is regarded as a relatively stable period and a mere blink of the eye in cosmic timelines. I'm reminded of the thin blue line [5]. You begin to realize how narrow a niche we live in. Humanity almost died out 70,000 years ago [6]. It's not really known why. There are lots of theories on the cause. It's estimated the population dropped into the tens of thousands. It's actually a big reason why there is little genetic diversity in humans (compared to other primates, for example). Far worse has happened on Earth and will likely happen again: the Chicxulub impact, supervolcanic eruptions like Yellowstone (about every 700,000 years in recent times), the magnetic poles flipping (and what that'll do to solar radiation hitting the Earth) and so on. And all of these pale into comparison to any space-based cataclysmic events (eg gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, magnatars, neutron star and black hole mergers). It really makes you think how fragile our existence is. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073800454/nasa-scientists-estimate-tonga-blast-at-10-megatons https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073800454/nasa-scientists-es... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa#:~:text=With%20an%20estimated%20Volcanic%20Explosivity,the%20most%20powerful%20nuclear%20device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa#:~:text=With%20an%20e... [4]: https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-was-the-worst-year-in-history https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-was-the-worst-year-i... [5]: http://lightexhibit.org/earth_atmosphere.html#:~:text=Earth's%20thin%20atmosphere%20is%20all,cold%2C%20dark%20void%20of%20space.&text=Our%20planet's%20atmosphere%20has%20no,gradually%20thins%20out%20into%20space http://lightexhibit.org/earth_atmosphere.html#:~:text=Earth'.... [6]: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
- baron816 5y agoIs this expected to have a global climate impact?
- smitty1110 5y agoThe Wikipedia page[1] for the event says a temporary drop of 0.1-0.5 degrees C for the next 12-15 months. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga_eruption_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga_eruption_and_...
- cwkoss 5y agoIs this a net 'good thing' for global human life because it will counterbalance anthropogenic climate change? (Probably still a significant net harm to Tongans I'd imagine :-( ) To what extent are the particles kicked up into the atmosphere a problem for life? Are they carcinogenic or respiratory risks?
- throwawayboise 5y agoI doubt it; it's a short-lived effect and probably doesn't really fall outside the normal range of year-to-year temperature variances.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adamredwoods 5y agoNo, it wasn't dense enough. https://www.ecowatch.com/volcano-eruptions-hunga-tonga-climate-change.html https://www.ecowatch.com/volcano-eruptions-hunga-tonga-clima...
- Synaesthesia 5y agoMost of Tonga is covered in ash. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60065767 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60065767
- nabla9 5y agoGlobally event appears unlikely to have a significant cooling effect on temperatures globally, h >"However, to date, it injected 'only' 0.4 Tg (400,000 tonnes) of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which is not enough to result in significant surface cooling for this individual eruption. "Unless further eruptive activity occurs, we should not detect significant surface cooling. At present, hazards related to ash fallout are really the number one concern." https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/01/19/22/explainer-tonga-volcano-eruptions-effect-on-global-climate https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/01/19/22/explainer-tonga-... Local environmental harm: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/tongas-volcanic-eruption-may-harm-environment-years-scientists-say-2022-01-18/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/tongas-volcanic...
- busyant 5y agoThis is an excellent lesson in how shitty my sense of geographic scale is. I would have guessed that the size of the eruption was on par with the size of a small city.
- vanattab 5y agoI mean your not wrong, the article is illustrating the mushroom cloud and ash cloud after 24 hours. So the explosive eruption its self is much smaller.
- robotresearcher 5y ago"Around the time of the initial eruption, a cloud measuring 38 km (24 miles) wide is thrust into the atmosphere. Its diameter already measures almost twice the length of Manhattan, New York. One hour later, it appears to measure around 650 km wide, including shock waves around its edge." One hour. Sanity check: it's never dark in the animations, which it would be if the images were taken over 24 hours. In other views you can see the night approaching.
- ChrisClark 5y agoAfter 1 hour actually, not 24 hours. But it is really mostly a huge ash cloud, not the explosion itself.
- mlindner 5y ago650 km in 1 hour (in diameter), aka 325 km/hr, aka about 1/4 the speed of sound. So yes that's basically the explosion.
- ChrisClark 5y agoActually, when you put it like that. Yikes! That's a crazy amount of energy!
- divbzero 5y agoThe Pacific Ocean is ginormous (I think that’s the technical term?) I often find myself surprised when I spin a globe (physical or virtual) and compare the expanse of the ocean to my neighborhood of the planet. The scale also makes the history of Polynesian seafaring all that more incredible.
- notjustanymike 5y agoThe animation with it placed over Florida helped me understand, but also gave me a really good idea...
- darknavi 5y agoNo need to take action, Florida Man is on the job!
- Taniwha 5y agoThere's a similar image that's essentially "what if it were Mt St Helens?" .... it covers WA and OR
- entropie 5y agoMy indoor pressure sensors registered both eruptions (?). Iam from germany.
- alliao 5y agoworld's largest boom box for sure.. that bass travelled
- lambda_dn 5y agoWondering if any ships were destroyed by the eruption the scale makes me think there had to be? Could Volcano eruptions be Earth's way of stabilizing climate change? i.e. sea water gets warmer and is no longer keeping the eruptions from occurring. Then the eruptions causes a drop in temperature due to the ash in the atmosphere?
- crakenzak 5y ago> Then the eruptions causes a drop in temperature due to the ash in the atmosphere? Interesting, this prompted me to read[1] into how it works and made me interested in why we don't pump sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to help cool down the planet and buy us more time to transition off of CO2/CH4 emitting processes? Is it cost prohibitive? We already cloud seed pretty often so there's infrastructure in place for a large scale operation? [1] https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/how-volcanoes-influence-climate https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/how-v...
- foobiekr 5y agoBecause ocean acidification is also a problem and we wouldn’t actually follow through and reduce emissions with the borrowed time.
- codesnik 5y agoacid rains are no joke either.
- iSnow 5y ago"But there are at least 27 reasons why stratospheric geoengineering may be a bad idea. These include disruption of the Asian and African summer monsoons, reducing precipitation to the food supply for billions of people; ozone depletion; no more blue skies; reduction of solar power; and rapid global warming if it stops, with devastating impacts on natural ecosystems. " https://cires.colorado.edu/events/stratospheric-sulfur-geoengineering-%E2%80%93-benefits-and-risks https://cires.colorado.edu/events/stratospheric-sulfur-geoen...
- askvictor 5y ago
- dr_dshiv 5y agoAnd it still wasn't big enough to put sufficient sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere to have a noticeable cooling effect. Too bad :( https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60088413 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60088413
- llampx 5y agoToo bad? It would be extremely cool for one summer, ruining crops and causing famines and then back to hotter summers from next year onwards. How does that help anyone?
- dr_dshiv 5y agoYou are describing an extreme cooling effect. If the Tonga eruption produced merely a mild cooling effect, it could contribute to the energy balance. Buying another year of frozen permafrost sounds ok to me.
- robertwt7 5y agoThat is huge! As someone who originally came from tropical country, volcano eruption sucks even if you live far away from it. The dust, the earthquake, tsunami warnings, etc. hopefully everyone who is affected is doing fine
- subsubzero 5y agoCurious if this will cause a slight cooling of the earth's air temperature due to increased volcanic particles in the air. I had no idea of the size of this eruption and it looks absolutely enormous based on this article. It didn't mention how many metric tons were ejected into the atmosphere Here is an article saying that after a eruption the air temperature rapidly cools for a while. Lets hope this doesn't wreck crop production. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volcanoes-cooled-earth-in-the-past-constrain-warming-from-excess-co2/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volcanoes-cooled-...
- burkaman 5y agoNot this time apparently. > Pinatubo erupted for several days, sending about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, or upper atmosphere. There, the gas combined with water to create aerosol particles that reflected and scattered some of the sun’s rays, keeping them from hitting the surface. That had the effect of cooling the atmosphere by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about half a degree Celsius) for several years. (It is also the mechanism of a controversial form of geoengineering: using planes or other means to continuously inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to intentionally cool the planet.) > But the Hunga eruption lasted only about 10 minutes, and satellite sensors in the days that followed measured about 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide reaching the stratosphere. “The amount of SO2 released is much, much smaller than, say, Mount Pinatubo,” said Michael Manga, an earth sciences professor at the University of California, Berkeley. So unless the Hunga eruption resumes and continues at a similarly strong level, which is considered unlikely, it won’t have a global cooling effect. - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/climate/scientists-tonga-volcano-eruption-effects.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/climate/scientists-tonga-...
- lnwlebjel 5y agoI posted a visualization of the shock wave as a submission, but I"ll repost it here. This is a satellite measurement of integrated atmospheric water vapor (IIUC), so changes in the density of air change the integrated measurement, such that you can see the shock wave travel around half the globe. https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/images/2022/01/220115_goes17_waterVaporTimeDifference_anim.gif https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/images/2022/01/22... (it take a few seconds to load, but I believe this is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen).
- roieki 5y ago
- _qua 5y agoThis is a 140 MB gif ◑﹏◐ I hope you don't mind, I reuploaded as an MP4: https://imgur.com/BbaLE5U https://imgur.com/BbaLE5U
- LeoPanthera 5y ago139MB is utter insanity for an animated GIF. Crushing it with gifsicle can get it down to 125MB but clearly GIF is the wrong choice of format here. Here's a HEVC compressed video version which is only 25M and suffers only extremely mild softness: http://david.gloveraoki.net/f/32M.mp4 http://david.gloveraoki.net/f/32M.mp4 It would probably be even better if I could work with the source video and not the gif version.
- wingworks 5y ago
- aaron695 5y ago
- wslh 5y agoI posted previously this reference: "Likely the Tonga shockwave from Buenos Aires, 10000 km from the eruption". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29949782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29949782
- lr 5y agoThis is amazing, and superimposing it over other land masses really helps to illustrate the point. I think it would be incredibly helpful to compare it to interstellar events from comets, especially to the (supposed) impact of the comet from Don't Look Up...
- jcims 5y agoMy hope of seeing video of the actual eruption and/or the associated lightning storm is slowly dwindling. :/
- dopidopHN 5y agoAre we gonna have very pink dramatic sunset because of it? ( akin to Krakatoa )
- greggman3 5y agoApparently there were small but destructive tsunamis in the bay area from the Tonga eruption https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt_HNFI4ckY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt_HNFI4ckY
- DonHopkins 5y agoWhere are you when we need you, Rodney Dangerfield? https://tmi.papost.org/the-pepsi-syndrome-saturday-night-live/ https://tmi.papost.org/the-pepsi-syndrome-saturday-night-liv... Dr. Edna Casey: It means, Mrs. Carter, your husband, President Carter, has become [ camera zooms in on Dr. Edna Casey ] The amazing colossal president. Rosalynn Carter: Well how big is he? Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney? [ Rodney Dangerfield enters ] Rodney Dangerfield: How do you do, how are you? Ross Denton: Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the president? Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s a big guy, I’ll tell you that, he’s a big guy. I tell you he’s so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington bridge dangling his feet in the water! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: Oh my God! Jimmy! Oh God! Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s big, I’ll tell you that, boy. He’s so big that when two girls make love to him at the same time, they never meet each other! He’s a big guy, I’ll tell you! Rosalynn Carter: Oh no! Oh Jimmy! My Jimmy! Rodney Dangerfield: I don’t want to upset you lady, he’s big, you know what I mean? Why he could have an affair with the Lincoln Tunnel! I mean, he’s really high! He’s big, I’ll tell you! He’s a big guy! Rosalynn Carter: No! No! No! Ross Denton: Rodney, thank you very much. You can go. Rodney Dangerfield: It’s my pleasure. He’s way up there, lady! you know what I mean? [ goes off, leaving Rosalynn Carter very upset ]
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoSo are we poised for a really extended winter or depressed summer?
- 2sk21 5y agoI have been reading Termination shock by Neal Stephenson and this eruption reminded me of the main plot in tat book - injecting sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to reduce heating. It will be interesting to track the effect of this eruption downwind.
- scotty79 5y agoWhat's your estimation of how many megatons of TNT it was?
- benkkey 5y agoThe article showed a great representation of what would happen if the explosion happened in other countries.
- IMAYousaf 5y agoThe scaled images are wild.