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The Tonga Volcano Eruption Caused a ‘Superbubble’ in Earth’s Ionosphere, Disrupting Satellite Navigation

With technology increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, it is becoming more important to understand space weather and its impacts on tech. The Tonga volcano eruption penetrated the ionosphere and disrupted satellite navigation. When you hear “space weather,” you typically think of huge explosions on the Sun — coronal mass ejections hurled towards Earth, creating ...

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GOES-18 image of Hunga Tonga Volcano. (Image: NOAA)

Hawai’i Earthquake Swarm Caused by Magma Moving Through ‘Sills’

Tiny earthquakes have been felt on the Big Island over the past seven years, in particular since the 2018 eruption and summit collapse of Kīlauea. Magma pumping through a massive complex of flat, interconnected chambers deep beneath volcanoes in Hawai‘i appears to be responsible for this unexplained swarm. The pancake-like chambers, called “sills,” channel magma ...

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Flowing lava creating a new landscape on the Big Island in Hawaii.

Methane Discovery Sheds New Light on World’s Largest Mass Extinction Event

Methane emissions created by volcanic activity burning buried fossil fuel deposits could have played a major role in the global warming that triggered the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history, a new study suggests. The Late Permian Mass Extinction, also known as “the great dying,” happened around 260 million years ago, and wiped out ...

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An erupting volcano.

Scientists Identify the Highest-Ever Recorded Volcanic Plume

The January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano produced the highest-ever recorded volcanic plume. Using satellite images, researchers at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics and RAL Space confirmed this. The colossal eruption is also the first to have been directly observed to have broken through to the mesosphere layer of the ...

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The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano.

2020 Volcanic Eruption Leads to Hours-Long Thunderstorm

A study of a 2020 volcanic eruption conducted by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Vaisala Inc., published yesterday in the Geological Society of America’s journal Geology, discusses how advances in global lightning detection have provided novel ways to characterize explosive volcanism. Lead author Alexa Van Eaton said: “It’s ...

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Lightning generated by Taal volcanic eruption.

Ozone Layer Destroyed by Ancient Volcanic Eruption

A catastrophic drop in atmospheric ozone layer levels around the tropics is likely to have contributed to a bottleneck in the human population around 60,000 to 100,000 years ago, an international research team has suggested. The loss of the ozone layer, triggered by the eruption of the Toba supervolcano located in present-day Indonesia, might solve ...

Troy Oakes

A massive volcanic eruption spewing out tons of ash.