The island of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano, which erupted violently on January 15 with a gigantic mushroom of steam, gas and ash, has almost completely disappeared.
This area of emerged land 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 acquired 12 hours following the large eruption.
Moment when the cloud dissipated enough to observe the area from space.
Vestiges of the initial islands
It is located regarding 45 kilometers northwest of the Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa, and is 500 meters long.
The island took shape between two islands formerly formed by the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano following it erupted in December 2015.
In the new images, only vestiges of those two initial islands remain.
The island was formed mainly by the accumulation of fragmented magmatic rock
Tonga volcano eruption
The violent eruption of the submarine volcano Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai on Saturday, January 16, caused an alert throughout the Pacific for a possible tsunami that ultimately has not had serious consequences.
However, it left the small island kingdom of Tonga covered in a thick layer of ash, giving the appearance of a “moonscape”.
The column of smoke rose up to 20 kilometers into the atmosphere.
In addition, the tongan islands They were left without electricity, communications or running water.
A situation that makes it difficult to obtain information on the state of the population.
It is estimated that some 80,000 people, in a country of 105,000 inhabitants, might be affected by the eruption and subsequent tsunami.
This was explained by a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in statements to the British network BBC.
???? At 17:08 UTC yesterday, #Copernicus # Sentinel1 ????????????️captured the 1⃣st image of #HungaTonga ????following the destructive eruption
The volcanic island is almost completely wiped out
⬇️ Comparison before (3 Jan.) / following (image of 15 Jan., ~12 hours following the eruption)#Tonga pic.twitter.com/KA98HTQCBz
— Copernicus EU (@CopernicusEU) January 16, 2022