The underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai erupted with a force, according to NASA, equivalent to the 500 atomic bombs that devastated the city of Hiroshima. How about this underwater volcano?
"Two-thirds of all volcanic activity occurs in the deep ocean," said Christoph Helo, a volcanologist at the University of Mainz, Germany.
Volcanic eruptions in Tonga are both powerful and unusual. The reason is that such underwater eruptions usually occur without much fanfare.
"Most of the volcanoes on our planet are in wet seas, this is nothing special. They erupt so quietly that no one cares," said Helo, quoted by Deutsche Welle.
The exact number of how many underwater volcanoes cannot be determined. Estimates from Tamsin Mather, professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford University, are in the hundreds to thousands.
Regarding the formation, it is no different from on land. "There is no specific difference in the formation of underwater volcanoes from those on land," Helo said.
Volcanoes form when magma is produced by magma in the second layer of Earth's interior and manages to rise. The impact of an underwater volcanic eruption depends on its proximity to the surface. The closer you get, the more damaging it is.
So far, underwater volcanoes have not been studied in detail, given their location, so they are still a mystery. "Only a few active sites have been studied in detail because underwater volcanoes are difficult to access," said Mather.
The eruption of an underwater volcano in Tonga itself is still being investigated intensively by scientists to find out its impact and cause.
