The island of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano, which erupted violently on January 15 and produced a massive mushroom of steam, gas, and ash, has nearly vanished.
This area of the landmass in the middle of Polynesia, created by an eruption in December 2005, no longer exists, as can be seen by comparing an image taken by the EU’s Sentinel 2 satellite on January 2, with another from Sentinel 1 taken 12 hours after the large eruption , when the cloud had dissipated enough to observe the area from space.
Located about 45 kilometers northwest of Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa and measuring 500 meters in length , the island took shape between two islands formerly formed by the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga after it erupted in December 2015.
🔴 At 17:08 UTC yesterday, #Copernicus #Sentinel1 🇪🇺🛰️captured the 1⃣st image of #HungaTonga 🌋after the destructive eruption
— Copernicus EU (@CopernicusEU) January 16, 2022
The volcanic island is almost completely wiped out
⬇️ Comparison before (3 Jan.) / after (image of 15 Jan., ~12 hours after the eruption)#Tonga pic.twitter.com/KA98HTQCBz
In the new images, only vestiges of those two initial islands remain. The island was mainly formed by the accumulation of fragmented magmatic rock .
#ImageOfTheDay #HungaTonga
— 🇪🇺 DG DEFIS #StrongerTogether (@defis_eu) January 17, 2022
A disastrous 🌋#eruption took place in the #Tonga Archipelago on 15 January
A volcanic island has completely vanished, as can be seen by comparing
↙️#Sentinel2's🇪🇺🛰️optical image of 2 Jan. and
↘️#Sentinel1's🇪🇺🛰️SAR image acquired ~12 h after the 🌋 pic.twitter.com/yrZsSqlPqO
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