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How big was the Tonga eruption?

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Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#71

Post by pitaj »

glup wrote: post #46
fghorow wrote: post #8

For 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

I was vacationing in Mammoth one time and started reading about the geology... quite a shock to find that basically everything to the east is a giant caldera [1]. Also 760,000 years ago is really quite recent on geologic time scales. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Valley_Caldera

That's about the same size as the Henry's Fork Caldera [0] which is within the much larger Island Park Caldera [1], both produced by the Yellowstone hot spot. The Island Park Caldera is one of the largest in the world.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_Fork_Caldera [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Park_Caldera

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#72

Post by munificent »

boringg wrote: post #51

Pretty 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.

Yes, 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.

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#74

Post by dylan604 »

kingsloi wrote: post #62
dylan604 wrote: post #16

This 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 thi…

Yeah I agree! I knew the eruption was big (being able to clearly see it from space), but those visuals 1) make me remember how big the Pacific is, 2) how much bigger the eruption was than I originally thought, when overlaid on somewhere I know the relative size of (such as Florida).

Yeah, seeing things above the ocean like that removes human relatable scale. Putting it over land masses that humans can relate changes everything.

Now, imagine the struggle with searching for a lost airplane in those same waters. Approaches impossible

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#75

Post by CoastalCoder »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #44
herpderperator wrote: post #20

Did 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.

From 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 (?)

I'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.

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#76

Post by riffic »

stavros wrote: post #61
riffic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edited, thank you. To answer your question, adjectives related to intelligence are ableist in origin. I don't think this needs to be explained and it's not my job to educate you or anyone else on this forum.

There should be a word for the driveby condemnation (ooh we could call it that) that is "what you said is unethical but it's not my job to tell you how". I doubt driveby condemnation will convince many people.

I mean, that's a fair point. I just feel this sort of dialogue is disrespectful to the engineers who actually build the stuff the grandparent commenter is complaining about.

moot since the comment itself is dead/flagged but if you're calling people idiots, show me your credentials.

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#77

Post by thomascgalvin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
Zash wrote: post #25

What I'm curious about is whether this was equivalent to, or larger than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa Also whether it will turn the sky red for months.

Krakatoa is estimated at 200 MT energy, this was estimated as 6 MT.

That is absolutely mind-boggling.

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#78

Post by stavros »

riffic wrote: post #76
stavros wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a word for the driveby condemnation (ooh we could call it that) that is "what you said is unethical but it's not my job to tell you how". I doubt driveby condemnation will convince many people.

I mean, that's a fair point. I just feel this sort of dialogue is disrespectful to the engineers who actually build the stuff the grandparent commenter is complaining about. moot since the comment itself is dead/flagged but if you're calling people idiots, show me your credentials.

Yeah, I agree with you on that, I've just heard the "it's not my job to educate you" point (you're right, it's not) before, and I've noticed it only tends to make the conversation worse.

I think that's because without the explanation it's more or less name-calling, since the accused doesn't know what they did wrong.

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#79

Post by RowanH »

Heard 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...

Re: How big was the Tonga eruption?

#80

Post by excitom »

rosstex wrote: post #65

I 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!!

Tonga'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-spen...

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