The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption on January 15, 2022, has set a new record for the greatest concentration of lightning ever detected. According to data from Vaisala’s Global Lightning Dataset GLD360, nearly 400 000 lightning events were detected within just six hours of the eruption, making it a truly exceptional phenomenon.
On January 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the Pacific Ocean erupted, triggering over 600 000 lightning events. The eruption was the largest in over 100 years, and it caused significant damage to the Kingdom of Tonga and other Pacific states.
According to data from GLD360, around 200 000 lightning events took place on January 13 and 14 but the majority occurred on January 15, with nearly 400 000 events detected in just six hours.1
This made it the greatest concentration of lightning ever recorded, with at the peak of the eruption, nearly half of all global lightning concentrated around the volcano.
Poster Comment:
This volcano was on the sea floor and sent more water into the upper atmosphere than any volcano in modern history. What goes up must come down so it has caused lots of floods.
In 1815 a volcano erupted and sent so much ash into the sky that 1816 in the US and Europe was the "year without a summer." If that happened today, we would lose few billion people to starvation, food riots, rebellions and assorted violence.