Tonga volcano eruption caused the most intense lighting ever recorded

The intense underwater explosion of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’pai volcano last year generated the most intense lightning ever recorded in history. 

On January 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano located around 500 feet below sea level near the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific erupted violently, recording one of the most powerful explosions in the 21st century. 

The explosion, which was similar in strength to the largest U.S. nuclear bomb, caused the highest-ever recorded volcanic plume and triggered tsunamis in several places around the world. Debris from the explosion was thrown more than 36 miles (58 kilometers) into the air.

New information about the explosion also shows that the Tonga eruption caused the most intense lightning that has ever been recorded, according to a recent report in Geophysical Research Letters. 

The storm caused by the eruption lasted 11 hours, generating around 192,000 lightning flashes—that is equal to 2,600 lightning strikes per minute. Additionally, the lightning occurred at an altitude of 20 to 30 kilometers, higher than any lighting has even been recorded. 

Researchers were able to detect the lightning strikes through a network of radio antennae that track storms, as well as through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) GOES-17 satellite and the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s Himawari-8 satellite. 

"These results frame an eruptive timeline for this globally important, yet remote, eruption, with implications for monitoring volcanic hazards using real-time lightning data in the future," wrote the authors of the study about the storm the eruption generated.

"Overall, our observations suggest that volcanic plumes can create the conditions for lightning initiation well outside the range of meteorological thunderstorms previously observed in Earth's atmosphere," they added.

The event was so intense that it disrupted satellite signals in space because it produced a “equatorial plasma bubble”—or a hole in the ionosphere and it made the loudest sound on Earth recorded since 1883.