Tonga under Sea volcano eruption Triggered the most Intense Lightning Storm Ever Recorded

The fastest lightning strike ever recorded occurred after the eruption of an undersea volcano in Tonga last year. The volcanic eruption that took place last year in the South Pacific Ocean had more than 100 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

Due to the eruption of this volcano, the water of a large part of the sea immediately turned into vapor and a mushroom shaped cloud of ash, gas and more than five lakh tons of vapor went towards the sky. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters Study According to , these conditions resulted in an electrically charged collision between ash, extremely cold water, and hail. Due to this, there was such a terrible lightning which was not recorded before. Alexa Van Eaton, a volcanologist at the US Geological Survey (USGS) and involved in this study, said that the resulting storm had generated more than 1,92,000 lightning flashes. Its high level was 2,615 flashes per minute. Some of these lightnings reached a height of about 30 kilometers above sea level.

It has been told in this study that such lightning has not been recorded before. “What we found with this eruption is that volcanic plumes can produce lightning at a much faster rate than other storms,” ​​Alexa said. For this study, scientists collected data using four sources, including the Geostationary Lightning Mapper of the American space agency NASA. The GOES-17 satellite captured images of the eruption of this undersea volcano early last year.

Alexa said, “The reason for the surprise in this was not only the huge power of lightning, but the rings formed by it surprised us more. We had not seen anything like this before. One lightning ring has been seen but many lightning rings. Not to.” Apart from this, the data has revealed that the smoke emanating from the eruption of this volcano was increasing for at least 11 hours. This study may help scientists better monitor volcanic eruptions and warn people about the risks they pose.