Tonga volcano eruption was fueled by 2 merging chambers that are still brimming with magma
By Sascha Pare( livescience.com ) published about 19 hours ago
Researchers have mapped the magma plumbing system beneath Tonga's underwater volcano and discovered three magma chambers, two of which fed the record-shattering 2022 eruption.
Aerial view of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano eruption in 2022. (Image credit: Maxar/Contributor via Getty Images)
Almost two years after a humongous eruption rocked Tonga's Hunga volcano in the southwest Pacific Ocean, scientists have finally mapped the huge magma plumbing system that gave birth to the record-breaking blast.
On Jan. 15, 2022, a volcano beneath the island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai exploded with such force it triggered the most intense lightning storm ever recorded and the first documented mega tsunami since antiquity. The eruption was felt worldwide, but the volcano's underwater setting posed a challenge for scientists trying to understand how such a violent blast occurred.
Now, in a study published Dec. 15 in the journal Science Advances, researchers have mapped slight variations in the pull of gravity in waters around the island before and after the eruption and found the explosion was likely fed by two magma chambers that merged.
"I was happily surprised that we can indeed image a relatively large magmatic system using this kind of dataset and method," said lead author Hélène Le Mével, a volcanologist and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C. This kind of work "is rarely done to study submarine volcanoes," Le Mével told Live Science in an email.
More:
https://www.space.com/tonga-volcano-still-burning-magma?utm_source=notification
= new reply since forum marked as read
