[HN Gopher] How big was the Tonga eruption?
___________________________________________________________________
How big was the Tonga eruption?
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 432 points
Date : 2022-01-24 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (graphics.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (graphics.reuters.com)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The gif time-lapse gives me some anxiety - it reminds me of the
| Sega game Space Harrier where the enemies come at you quickly,
| within a few frames.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Most of Tonga is covered in ash. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
| asia-60065767
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| And it still wasn't big enough to put sufficient sulfur dioxide
| in the atmosphere to have a noticeable cooling effect. Too bad :(
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60088413
| llampx wrote:
| Too bad? It would be extremely cool for one summer, ruining
| crops and causing famines and then back to hotter summers from
| next year onwards. How does that help anyone?
| robertwt7 wrote:
| That is huge! As someone who originally came from tropical
| country, volcano eruption sucks even if you live far away from
| it. The dust, the earthquake, tsunami warnings, etc. hopefully
| everyone who is affected is doing fine
| wslh wrote:
| I posted previously this reference: "Likely the Tonga shockwave
| from Buenos Aires, 10000 km from the eruption".
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29949782
| alliao wrote:
| world's largest boom box for sure.. that bass travelled
| milliams wrote:
| The title is ungrammatical and refers to "states" where the
| article does not.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Also poster apparently means US states, not like physical
| states of a system.
| throwthere wrote:
| > Also poster apparently means US states, not like physical
| states of a system.
|
| I think the article means "state" in the sense of "country,"
| not US State.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Okay okay, I changed States in Nations, better now?
| danbruc wrote:
| I fear you will soon learn that nation is not capitalized
| and strictly speaking refers to a group of people, not a
| geographical region.
| mynegation wrote:
| No, if you check the article, poster means sovereign states,
| or what in US is called "countries". There is not a single
| example of a state in USA.
| [deleted]
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| There's one of Florida and one of California.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| I changed "states" to "States", I thought it was obvious
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Write a better tittle and I'll change it.
|
| By the way for me Spain, Florida or UK are states, how you call
| them?
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Tonga eruption as if it had* happened in various nations
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Edited, thanks a lot for the correction! English is not my
| first language!
| ketzo wrote:
| just so you know, you are correct to call Florida and
| California "states."
| riffic wrote:
| the article does not refer to "Nations" either (the phrase
| used in the Reuters text is "well-known land masses"). title
| nitpicking is one of the worst things about HN (and there are
| many things wrong with this site), imo just use the original
| title.
| dang wrote:
| You should have used the article's original title, because it
| was neither misleading nor linkbait. I've reverted it now.
|
| " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Interesting; on aside, I would call:
|
| Florida - State
|
| Ontario - Province
|
| Spain & UK - "Country" colloquially; might use the term
| "Nation" if I needed to be more inclusive/ambiguous
|
| (Understanding that formally, State _might_ in fact be a
| better term: e.g. it 's "Minister of the State" or
| "Statesmanship" etc; but this is how I'd use them in daily
| life. ESL, 25 years in Canada FWIW)
| Clubber wrote:
| State and Country are used interchangeably. The United
| States, before the Civil War was just that, a union of self
| governing entities. A nation is a group of similar peoples
| such as the Nation of Islam or Navajo Nation.
|
| _Country and State are synonymous terms that both apply to
| self-governing political entities. A nation, however, is a
| group of people who share the same culture but do not have
| sovereignty._
|
| https://www.infoplease.com/world/diplomacy/state-country-
| and...
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/country-state-and-nation-1433559
| cletus wrote:
| Someone else estimated the Tonga explosion at 10 megatons [1] and
| it was heard thousands of miles away. Bear in mind, humans have
| detonated nuclear weapons larger than this, most famously the
| Tsar Bomba [2] at 50 megatons. Compare this to something not that
| long ago: Krakatoa, estimated at 200 megatons [3].
|
| Then compare this to the Year Without Summer (536 AD) [4]:
|
| > Falling in the time known as the 'Dark Ages', the year 536 AD
| fully embraced this moniker as Europe, the Middle East and parts
| of Asia were plunged into 24-hour darkness for 18 months. Summer
| temperatures plummeted between 1.5-2.5degC causing crops to fail
| and millions to starve to death.
|
| All of this has happened in the last 10,000 years, which is
| regarded as a relatively stable period and a mere blink of the
| eye in cosmic timelines. I'm reminded of the thin blue line [5].
| You begin to realize how narrow a niche we live in.
|
| Humanity almost died out 70,000 years ago [6]. It's not really
| known why. There are lots of theories on the cause. It's
| estimated the population dropped into the tens of thousands. It's
| actually a big reason why there is little genetic diversity in
| humans (compared to other primates, for example).
|
| Far worse has happened on Earth and will likely happen again: the
| Chicxulub impact, supervolcanic eruptions like Yellowstone (about
| every 700,000 years in recent times), the magnetic poles flipping
| (and what that'll do to solar radiation hitting the Earth) and so
| on.
|
| And all of these pale into comparison to any space-based
| cataclysmic events (eg gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, magnatars,
| neutron star and black hole mergers).
|
| It really makes you think how fragile our existence is.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073800454/nasa-scientists-
| es...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
|
| [3]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa#:~:text=With%20an%20e...
|
| [4]: https://www.history.co.uk/articles/what-was-the-worst-
| year-i...
|
| [5]:
| http://lightexhibit.org/earth_atmosphere.html#:~:text=Earth'....
|
| [6]:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Maybe interesting, I keep a list of large energy events/stores
| for thinking about the scale of global catastrophes.
|
| Looks like this Tonga eruption is VEI5 or 6, so between St
| Helens and Pinatubo.
|
| Comments appreciated in the doc!
|
| - Mt. Toba 74kya, VEI 8/M8.8 eruption energy: 1e21-1e22 Joules
|
| - M8 Volcanoes once every million years, but M7 yield > 10x
| more energy over time.
|
| - Global Warming: 7.88e21 Joule/year
|
| - Hiawatha Crater (Pleistocene, possibly 12kya) impact energy:
| 3e21 J
|
| - Hurricane (1% kinetic, 99% latent heat): 1e21 J
|
| - Human energy production 2013: 5.7e20 J/year
|
| - Mt. Tambora 1815, VEI 7 eruption energy: 1.3e20 J
|
| - Largest earthquakes 2: 1e19 J
|
| - World nuclear weapon stockpile yield (extrapolated from USA):
| 16e18 J
|
| - United States nuclear weapon stockpile yield 2020 (~2Gt TNT):
| 8.3e18
|
| - Mt. Pinatubo 1991, Krakatoa 1883; VEI 6 eruption energy:
| 8.3e17 J
|
| - Mt. St. Helens 1980, VEI 4 eruption energy: 1e17 J
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/14EslUTRCwOgc_EobxH6X5e01...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The magnetic poles are about to flip Austin actually :) At
| least we know this time
| Zash wrote:
| 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.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I think if there was another Krakatoa, it would eclipse Covid
| in the news cycle for weeks.
| phreeza wrote:
| My understanding is it's smaller even than Pinatubo, which
| happened in living memory, and significantly smaller than
| Krakatoa.
| chris_va wrote:
| The estimate is about 20x smaller
| samcheng wrote:
| We have had really beautiful sunsets here in Northern
| California for the past week. Maybe related? (We also have a
| winter wildfire in Big Sur that could be contributing.)
| markdown wrote:
| Nah, the ash cloud went westwards towards Australia.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Krakatoa is estimated at 200 MT energy, this was estimated as 6
| MT.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The 6-10MT estimate is really a lower bound based on the
| amount of material moved from the island. A more reliable
| estimate is based on the overpressure, which was
| significantly larger than the Tsar Bomba (also exploded over
| an island) which was 50MT. https://text.npr.org/1074438703
|
| That said, the amount of SO2 was fairly low, so the climate
| impact not likely to be large.
| acchow wrote:
| Any idea if this will have a measurably effect on climate
| change?
| brendyn wrote:
| I heard from an Anton Petrov video it would reduce the
| planets average temperature by half a degree for some
| time, but I don't know where he got that info from.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| That is absolutely mind-boggling.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Mount Tambora is estimated to have been about 33GT. That
| one messed up weather globally for two years.
| neuronic wrote:
| And it's suspected to have had an impact on Napoleons
| Waterloo disaster by changing the weather...
| silisili wrote:
| Will this have a cooling effect on the Earth this year? I seem to
| remember global temperatures fell after the big one in the
| Philippines.
| twiddling wrote:
| The amount of sulfur injected into the atmosphere was quite
| small compared to the explosion of Pinatubo
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| Yes about .5deg
| subsubzero wrote:
| Curious if this will cause a slight cooling of the earth's air
| temperature due to increased volcanic particles in the air. I had
| no idea of the size of this eruption and it looks absolutely
| enormous based on this article. It didn't mention how many metric
| tons were ejected into the atmosphere
|
| Here is an article saying that after a eruption the air
| temperature rapidly cools for a while. Lets hope this doesn't
| wreck crop production.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volcanoes-cooled-...
| burkaman wrote:
| Not this time apparently.
|
| > Pinatubo erupted for several days, sending about 20 million
| tons of sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere, or upper
| atmosphere. There, the gas combined with water to create
| aerosol particles that reflected and scattered some of the
| sun's rays, keeping them from hitting the surface. That had the
| effect of cooling the atmosphere by about 1 degree Fahrenheit
| (about half a degree Celsius) for several years. (It is also
| the mechanism of a controversial form of geoengineering: using
| planes or other means to continuously inject sulfur dioxide
| into the stratosphere to intentionally cool the planet.)
|
| > But the Hunga eruption lasted only about 10 minutes, and
| satellite sensors in the days that followed measured about
| 400,000 tons of sulfur dioxide reaching the stratosphere. "The
| amount of SO2 released is much, much smaller than, say, Mount
| Pinatubo," said Michael Manga, an earth sciences professor at
| the University of California, Berkeley. So unless the Hunga
| eruption resumes and continues at a similarly strong level,
| which is considered unlikely, it won't have a global cooling
| effect.
|
| - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/climate/scientists-
| tonga-...
| RowanH wrote:
| 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...
| dylanz wrote:
| Takaka or Motueka? I used to live in that area. Golden Bay has
| a pretty unique geographical layout!
| belter wrote:
| Talk about long distance effects....
|
| "Tonga volcanic eruption shockwave reached the Netherlands"
|
| https://nltimes.nl/2022/01/16/tonga-volcanic-eruption-shockw...
| wiredfool wrote:
| There was a report from a climate org in Miami that they
| recognized the pressure pulse 9 times, once each ~35 hours
| since the eruption.
| divbzero wrote:
| What did the "bang" sound like? Was it the sharp crack of
| thunder close by, the slower rumbling of distant thunder, the
| sound of fireworks exploding, or would some other description
| fit better?
| muti wrote:
| I also heard it in the north of the South Island of NZ. To me
| it sounded like very distant explosions, like a cannon
| firing, or avalanche control explosives.
|
| We heard multiple explosions over the span of a minute or
| two, presumably from the multiple paths the sound took as
| they all sounded the same.
| swamp40 wrote:
| Close up (next island over) it was a low loud fast boom like
| dynamite going off nearby. Over in an instant. From a
| Facebook video. Really strange that it would sound that way.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I've heard that the Krakatoa eruption was so loud that the
| sound wave reverberated around the globe several times. I
| assume that means if you're on exactly the other end of the
| world, the sound is coming at you from every direction?
| Similarly, no matter where you are on earth, the sound is
| coming at you from different directions at different times? Of
| course, I'm assuming that the sound wave was in audible
| frequencies which may or may not be the case...
| mkl wrote:
| Even exactly on the other side of the world, the sound will
| reach you at different times from different directions due to
| different pressures, temperatures, mountains, etc. on the
| way.
| Railsify wrote:
| But there would be a spot where the pressure waves would
| cross?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > But there would be a spot where the pressure waves
| would cross [simultaneously]?
|
| There could be, but it's not immediately obvious that
| there has to be.
|
| It does seem like certain points would need to be on
| 'cusps' of the wavefront, though, so something like
| getting the wave from the north and the northeast
| 'simultaneously'.
| gnramires wrote:
| I think so. I think there is necessarily a circle
| "eversion" (turning it inside-out) with a crease.
| Whatever is the point of the crease would hear sound from
| all directions. Even with something like a figure 8
| collapsing wavefront, eventually one or more creases
| should form.
| rocqua wrote:
| If the crease is a line, would it not sound like comming
| from two opposite directions simultaneously?
| layer8 wrote:
| Not necessarily. The set of points reached last by the
| waves could be multiple points, or a line, or multiple
| lines.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| My back yard weather station picked up the shockwave here in
| the bay area:
| https://twitter.com/DavidCWG/status/1482451910154014720
|
| I had no idea that was even possible. Crazy stuff.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Mine picked it up too - in Portugal.
|
| Teeny little dip and crest, and I wasn't sure until the
| meteorological station in a city 30km tweeted that they'd
| seen it too, and the times coincided (well, I was about a
| minute later) very neatly.
| muti wrote:
| We also heard it while tramping on the thousand acre plateau
| just north of Murchison. It was very quiet, so we were lucky to
| be where we were with no noise pollution to drown it out.
|
| Though at the time we had no clue what it was, we joked about
| being in the Tomorrow series timeline.
| depereo wrote:
| My colleague's backyard weather station picked up the pressure
| wave in Christchurch several times as it repeatedly circled the
| globe.
|
| Sea levels in the upper south were a little 'odd', trending
| higher and more variably than usual, even if not by that much,
| for a week.
| jmspring wrote:
| Here in California in the Sierra Nevada, a pressure variation
| was noticeable around 4am pacific.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I find it difficult to believe that even a massive eruption
| could literally push sea levels up or down in the surrounding
| area (waves /= sea level). Volcanoes are massive, but the
| energy to move cubic miles of water, water many hundreds or
| thousands of miles away, is at different level. Hurricanes
| can move water like that, but they do so with orders of
| magnitude greater energy (tens of thousands of nukes).
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| US tsunami monitoring has a record.
|
| https://www.tsunami.gov/previous.events/?p=03-19-09-Tonga
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A tsunami is a wave. Not sea level. Waves literally come
| and go over a period of seconds to minutes. They wobble
| back and forth without actually moving much water. Sea
| levels move on the order of hours and days and involve
| the physical movement of literally hundreds of cubic-
| miles of water. Raising or lowering a sea level
| measurement (not a temporary wave) requires far more
| energy than a volcano.
|
| From the link: "Listed wave heights are maximum amplitude
| in cm (above sea level)." In other words, even tsunami
| waves heights are not changes to sea level.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > A tsunami is a wave. Not sea level. Waves literally
| come and go over a period of seconds to minutes. They
| wobble back and forth without actually moving much water.
| Sea levels move on the order of hours and days and
| involve the physical movement of literally hundreds of
| cubic-miles of water.
|
| You should be aware that tsunamis behave in the way
| you're calling "sea level", and not in the way you're
| calling "wave". It's true that a tsunami is a wave, but
| it's not true that they come and go over a period of
| minutes, or that they fail to move much water. They're
| very large.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Some of them, specifically those involving undersea
| plates moving upwards, but even those do settle out
| quickly. That is why the term literally means "port
| waves" because they bypass normal wave protections and
| move into ports, similar to how tidal bores move up
| rivers. But the comment above spoke of sea levels being
| impacted for many days, something beyond even thrust
| tunamis and more akin to hurricanes.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| Think of it more like a very long period wave, much like
| a tide, but on a much shorter time period than the tide.
| Tides, waves (periods on the order of seconds), and tidal
| waves (or tsunamis) are all fluctuations in sea level.
| Water can be moved when the waves encounter enclosed bays
| or harbors. Think of the water level dropping 3 ft over
| 20 minutes in front of a harbor entrance and imagine the
| currents that can result.
|
| Here's an example of observations from coastal California
| (red line shows sea level measured every 6 minutes: https
| ://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/waterlevels.html?id=941211..
| .
|
| It is truly amazing - I'm not surprised that it's hard to
| believe.
| samatman wrote:
| A tsunami is an entirely different kind of wave than a
| normal wave.
|
| A normal wave is transverse, and a tsunami is a pressure
| wave. The first bobs the water up and down and the wave
| moves forward, the second shoves water ahead of it,
| displacing it upward into the wave.
|
| The tsunami won't break when the column gets short, but
| rather transfer all of the energy of moving a deep water
| column to a shallow one. That's what makes them
| dangerous.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't think anyone - except perhaps you - is suggesting
| that the eruption caused an actual rise in sea levels.
| vmception wrote:
| These are totally memeable gifs
|
| Reminds me of the "problem solved" pictures
|
| California, Florida, the Koreas, Israel, Somalia?
|
| These are totally intentional examples for the memes aka for the
| lulz
|
| I'm saving all these before other people notice
| nabla9 wrote:
| Globally event appears unlikely to have a significant cooling
| effect on temperatures globally, h
|
| >"However, to date, it injected 'only' 0.4 Tg (400,000 tonnes) of
| sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which is not enough to
| result in significant surface cooling for this individual
| eruption. "Unless further eruptive activity occurs, we should not
| detect significant surface cooling. At present, hazards related
| to ash fallout are really the number one concern."
|
| https://news.abs-cbn.com/spotlight/01/19/22/explainer-tonga-...
|
| Local environmental harm:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/tongas-volcanic...
| boringg wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As another comparison, the UK is just slightly smaller than
| Oregon. But has 16 times as many people.
| munificent wrote:
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| Have you ever looked at how big earth is relative to Jupiter
| to the sun? And how far each one of them truly are from each
| other? We're terrible at sense of scale :)
| sveme wrote:
| Bit similar to how everyone misunderstands the size of
| Africa. Here's a nice toy to play around with for a couple of
| hours: https://thetruesize.com
|
| So it makes sense to compare the US to Europe as a continent.
| Got it. What kind of criticism have you read that is wrong
| due to a misunderstanding of the scale of the US?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > What kind of criticism have you read that is wrong due to
| a misunderstanding of the scale of the US?
|
| My guess would be population density. The US has ~330M
| people, Europe has ~748M.
| lovecg wrote:
| US is more dense though (going by www.worldometers.info).
| I think these explanations "why we can't have good
| things" are too simplistic. Ignore rail and fiber for a
| second, and look at commuter air travel for example:
| European market is much more competitive and prices are
| much lower than for comparable flights in the US.
| munificent wrote:
| _> What kind of criticism have you read that is wrong due
| to a misunderstanding of the scale of the US?_
|
| The main one is just not understanding how difficult
| transit and logistics is here. I've heard British people
| complain that we should just put high speed passenger rail
| all across the country like they did while not realizing
| that their country is literally 1% of the size of the US
| and more than ten times the population density.
|
| The most sadly hilarious one I see fairly often is
| Europeans planning vacations to the states and intending to
| drive across the country in a few days so they can see all
| the big landmarks on the east and west coasts. It takes a
| lot longer than they realize.
| cwillu wrote:
| I find the EU is a better frame of reference for the US than
| any given country is.
| munificent wrote:
| Yes. And to put it in further perspective, the entire EU is
| still only 43% of the area of the US.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| https://mapfight.xyz/map/gb/#us.fl
| azinman2 wrote:
| ... or how big Florida is.
| boringg wrote:
| I already knew the size of Florida :)
| ec109685 wrote:
| Britain is 1.7 times larger:
| https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-
| comparison/flor...)
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| As an American who enjoys soccer, it's crazy when you then
| overlay the entire football pyramid onto Britain. I don't see
| how USA soccer (MLS, grassroots, lower leagues ect...) could
| ever be like the "ideal" of how things are done on the other
| side of the ocean.
| baron816 wrote:
| Is this expected to have a global climate impact?
| smitty1110 wrote:
| The Wikipedia page[1] for the event says a temporary drop of
| 0.1-0.5 degrees C for the next 12-15 months.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga_eruption_and_...
| cwkoss wrote:
| Is this a net 'good thing' for global human life because it
| will counterbalance anthropogenic climate change?
|
| (Probably still a significant net harm to Tongans I'd imagine
| :-( )
|
| To what extent are the particles kicked up into the
| atmosphere a problem for life? Are they carcinogenic or
| respiratory risks?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I doubt it; it's a short-lived effect and probably doesn't
| really fall outside the normal range of year-to-year
| temperature variances.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| No, it wasn't dense enough.
|
| https://www.ecowatch.com/volcano-eruptions-hunga-tonga-clima...
| notjustanymike wrote:
| The animation with it placed over Florida helped me understand,
| but also gave me a really good idea...
| darknavi wrote:
| No need to take action, Florida Man is on the job!
| michilehr wrote:
| My cheap weather station has recorded the blast wave three times.
|
| https://michilehr.de/the-eruption-of-hunga-tonga-volcano-and...
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I find the mix of your commas and periods in numbers a little
| confusing.
|
| >305,8 m/s but also 8.7m and ~1.4 hPa.
|
| I know that Europeans have a different notation to Americans,
| but is there a rule here I am missing?
| tacker2000 wrote:
| No, there is no missed rule, the comma is the only official
| decimal separator in these parts. But I can relate to the the
| OP. Us here in the comma world are forever converting numbers
| in CSV and Excel files back and forth so as to display them
| in a proper number format. It's like that darned USB port,
| you have to flip it 3 times to get it right.
| michilehr wrote:
| No missed rule. Thank you for your feedback. I have
| replaced the decimal separators '.' with ','. Sorry for the
| confusion.
| smoe wrote:
| Growing up in Switzerland with a dot as the decimal
| separator, I newer knew just how much of an outlier we are
| in this part of the world until now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File
| :...
|
| We also use apostrophe as the thousands separator, so:
| 1'234'567.89 which I personally always found much more
| readable that using commas and dots. Is there any other
| country that uses this combination?
| nameistaken wrote:
| This should be the grand compromise.
|
| The US will convert to metric, however everyone else has to
| convert from commas to decimal points.
|
| Places using decimal separators and the metric system are
| the real winners here.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I'll celebrate for a whole week whenever the US converts
| to the metric system. I hope I'll still be young enough
| to handle it.
| r00fus wrote:
| Since it's a big "moat" for parts manufacturing (mainly
| for defense industry)... I predict the USA will give up
| imperial units when it's empire finally collapses.
|
| Perhaps in the next few decades as China builds its own
| economic sphere.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Um, it's unamerican to use "imperial" units. When you
| have a revolution, you have to get rid of all things
| imperial!
|
| Therefore US pints are 16oz, not 20oz, and so on for most
| fluid measures (fluid ounces are based on dry ounces,
| which are avoirdupois, not imperial).
| manquer wrote:
| While OP here made a mistake, some countries use mixed
| systems depending on what it is used for . Switzerland for
| example uses comma for normal numbers and dot for currency
| alone.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#Examples_of_.
| ..
| api wrote:
| Is this going to make our weather measurably colder for the next
| year?
| woodruffw wrote:
| It'll apparently have a slight cooling effect on the southern
| hemisphere[1], lasting until this spring.
|
| [1]: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/459707/tonga-eruption-
| co...
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| I posted a visualization of the shock wave as a submission, but
| I"ll repost it here. This is a satellite measurement of
| integrated atmospheric water vapor (IIUC), so changes in the
| density of air change the integrated measurement, such that you
| can see the shock wave travel around half the globe.
|
| https://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/satellite-blog/images/2022/01/22...
|
| (it take a few seconds to load, but I believe this is one of the
| most incredible things I've ever seen).
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| 139MB is utter insanity for an animated GIF.
|
| Crushing it with gifsicle can get it down to 125MB but clearly
| GIF is the wrong choice of format here.
|
| Here's a HEVC compressed video version which is only 25M and
| suffers only extremely mild softness:
| http://david.gloveraoki.net/f/32M.mp4
|
| It would probably be even better if I could work with the
| source video and not the gif version.
| _qua wrote:
| This is a 140 MB gif **
|
| I hope you don't mind, I reuploaded as an MP4:
| https://imgur.com/BbaLE5U
| parhamn wrote:
| As a 27mb video: https://imgur.com/a/dqc2Gii
|
| I think it's super noisy so it doesn't compress well.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Incredible! Thanks for posting this.
| rosstex wrote:
| 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!!
| BookPage wrote:
| I have a great aunt who lives in Tonga - my Grandma spoke to
| her a couple days ago. Apparently people on the main Island
| (Tongatapu) are mainly fine - her main issue is a bunch of ash
| on her roof, which apparently is going to cost for $500 to get
| removed from local tradespeople.
| excitom wrote:
| 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...
| goodcanadian wrote:
| The submarine cable connecting Tonga to the world was severed.
| While satellite connections exist, apparently the ash cloud
| interfered with that as well. It has been extremely
| difficult/expensive to get any pictures out of Tonga.
| fghorow wrote:
| 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
| glup wrote:
| 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
| pitaj wrote:
| 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
| dheera wrote:
| scythe wrote:
| This reasoning cannot lead to a practical policy directive.
| Volcanoes often lay dormant for thousands of years and their
| eruptions can deny _huge_ amounts of land, which is not a
| reasonable tradeoff compared to "just rebuilding the
| railroad every 5000 years", since its service life is
| probably shorter than that anyway.
| dheera wrote:
| Maybe, but building a railroad invites towns and cities to
| be built around it.
| vkou wrote:
| > I mean, how fucking dumb do you need to be to look at a
| lava flow and cut a road or train track through it? Do they
| not realize that lava means "run"? Build infrastructure
| elsewhere.
|
| Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or coasts,
| because rivers flood[1] and coasts get hurricanes that cause
| floods, nobody should build anything in valleys[1], because
| they flood, nobody should ever build anything in mountains,
| because they get avalanches and mudslides[1], nobody should
| build anything on the Ring of Fire, because earthquakes, and
| the midwest should be uninhabited because tornadoes.
|
| If someone built a two-lane road that cuts through an old
| lava flow, maybe those people aren't the idiots. Maybe
| they've done the math, and determined that the cost of going
| around it is going to be greater than the risk of eruption *
| cost of dealing with the consequences.
|
| [1] Stupid Canadians[2], building a highway through a valley,
| and some mountains. If only someone with some common sense
| would have come in and told them that this was a bad idea! ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2021_Pacific_Northwes...
|
| [2] Now they don't have a highway!
| https://www.nanaimobulletin.com/news/aerial-video-of-
| coquiha...
| dheera wrote:
| > Right, and nobody should build cities on rivers or
| coasts,
|
| Many ancient civilizations knew not to build on coasts.
| Beijing, Xi'an, Cairo, Rome, Paris, Mexico City, Madrid,
| London, Moscow, Kyoto, most of these cities of critical
| governmental and strategic importance were not built on
| coasts for very good reasons.
|
| And then you have some modern hipsters after the 17th
| century who decided not to take a history lesson and
| started to build NYC, Shanghai, LA, Tokyo, Shenzhen,
| Singapore, Washington DC, and other cities on the coasts.
| Note that none of these cities have much history to them,
| for a reason. Not a good plan. Humans are pretty dumb.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Ancient civilizations did build on coasts, you're cherry
| picking a handful of cities that weren't, but most (if
| not all, going off memory) of the cities you listed were
| built along rivers. Building on the coast gave (and
| gives) access to trade and fishing which are of great
| utility to most societies.
|
| Besides, avoiding the coast itself doesn't do you much
| good. Earthquakes, volcanoes, flooding (from rivers or
| rain), drought, fire, tornadoes can hit in many different
| areas even away from the coast. Hell, hurricanes can go
| pretty far inland and do quite a bit of damage (more from
| the flooding than the winds, but also the winds, at that
| point). You'd be hard pressed to find a totally safe
| place on this planet that could support the entire human
| population. You'll still need the hazardous areas for
| agricultural and mining purposes if nothing else, and
| unless people can handle a 1000 mile commute, you'll end
| up with communities and cities growing in those places.
| finnh wrote:
| You seem to have a lot of anger. You might want to
| consider letting some of it go - it's a heavy load.
| Speaking from experience.
| vkou wrote:
| You've cherry-picked a bunch of non-coastal cities, but
| completely missed that nearly all of them were built on
| _rivers_.
|
| Which have all of the same problems with flooding as
| coasts, but much worse. Coasts flood when you get a major
| storm causing a surge, or a major earthquake. Rivers
| flood when the seasons change, when it rains upstream,
| when you get a mudslide upstream, when there's a major
| earthquake sending a tsunami upriver...
|
| Why do you think cities built on coasts and rivers on the
| whole grew, and out-competed cities that were built
| inland?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I'm pretty happy living in a coastal city though. Which
| by the way was founded in the middle ages :)
| irrational wrote:
| I don't understand. Literally all of Hawaii is built on top
| of lava flows. Are Hawaiians dumb idiots for building roads
| and other infrastructure on top of lava flows?
| dheera wrote:
| At least they're smart for putting most of their population
| on the inactive islands like Oahu.
| dave5104 wrote:
| > And then you have idiots that build train tracks and
| highways right through lava
|
| I was disappointed to see no active lava flows in your linked
| image. What you show is simply a road and train tracks built
| on top of rocks.
| dheera wrote:
| Lava will likely flow there again the next time Shasta
| erupts.
| renewiltord wrote:
| True, but we were dumb enough to build a civilization on
| this planet and lava will flow everywhere the next time
| we have something like what caused the K-T event so I
| suppose it runs in the family.
| dave5104 wrote:
| Its eruption history is on the order of once every
| hundreds of years. By the time its next eruption comes
| around, it's very possible that infrastructure will be
| long gone for other reasons.
|
| In most cases, infrastructure existence and placement is
| barely a blip on geologic time.
| riffic wrote:
| you could make your point without being derisive and ableist,
| especially considering the people involved have credentials
| and are trained in their fields.
| pyrophane wrote:
| I'm assuming you meant to write ableist, in which case, how
| is the above comment ableist?
| riffic wrote:
| 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.
| dzmien wrote:
| If you are going to call someone out, why not try to make
| it educational?
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| riffic wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| czzr wrote:
| I had to read it several times to get it, but I think
| they're referring to "dumb" which could also refer to
| people who can't speak.
|
| The funny thing about this is that I simply read "dumb"
| as "stupid" and didn't make any connection to being mute
| - but thanks to the earlier comment I've now made the
| association. So, well done policing the discourse, I
| guess?
| user982 wrote:
| It's offensive to idiots.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Hmm, the problem with the parent is that it's derisive and
| also just wrong, not that it is 'ableist'.
| dheera wrote:
| But it creates "engagement" which is rewarded these days
| apparently.
|
| Also, I thought the trained people should have learned a
| thing or two from Pompei not to build near volcanoes. I'll
| cut some slack for the people who designed Pompei, they
| didn't know, but everyone after that should have learned.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Pompeii was a Pyroclastic flow not lava.
| dheera wrote:
| OK, I meant more like "dangerous hot shit that wipes out
| everything in its path" in a general sense.
|
| If someone gave me a contract to build something in
| modern-day Herculaneum I would say no. I think it's
| irresponsible to build there. In terms of lives lost it's
| tantamount to knowingly shipping a hundred 777s with
| loose screws that cause them to crash.
|
| The number of downvotes on this thread is also exactly
| _why_ we have disasters with volcanic eruptions. This is
| like the geological equivalent of a bunch of antivaxxers.
| mattmoose21 wrote:
| What are the chances that the volcano erupts with a train
| on/near that portion of track? How often would you likely
| have to fix it? How much does it cost to go around? I am
| sure these questions are being asked and the risks being
| weighed. They may not be right and you might not agree
| with them but unless they did this without any
| forethought I would not call them dumb. Also you are
| comparing them to Pompei even though this is a train
| track not a city.
| dheera wrote:
| It would disrupt critical supply chains. That train line
| is part of a key freight artery between Seattle,
| Portland, SF, LA, and SD.
|
| Railroads and highways also invite towns and cities to be
| built around them, so if you want to be responsible
| toward future generations of human lives, you should
| direct those major arteries through less geologically-
| active regions.
|
| Hugging an active volcano never was a good idea in
| history and it still isn't.
| Taniwha wrote:
| There's a similar image that's essentially "what if it were Mt St
| Helens?" .... it covers WA and OR
| entropie wrote:
| My indoor pressure sensors registered both eruptions (?). Iam
| from germany.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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 this
| visual is one of those that definintely makes things clearer.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| FWIW:
|
| * I think visuals are great for illumination overall, some
| people not withstanding :)
|
| * I think they also used semi-transparent shadow
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Yes, they did use transparent shadows. You can tell because
| the images are not GIF's, they're actually a sequence of PNG
| images overlayed atop other PNG images. There's the base
| satellite image of the area, then the frames-of-explosion-
| with-transparency overlayed atop them. You can confirm this
| by right clicking on the image and choosing "open image in
| new tab", which will (usually) open this final frame in a new
| tab.
|
| [0] - https://graphics.reuters.com/TONGA-
| VOLCANO/lgpdwjyqbvo/cdn/i...
| bt1a wrote:
| I tried to save one of the "gifs" to share with a friend
| and was quite upset that I found myself with a png.
| Interesting technique. Do you think this was done to have
| better quality animated images? GIF compression isn't
| amazing (relative to WebM at least)
| capitainenemo wrote:
| I mean, they could have used APNG at this point.
| https://caniuse.com/apng
|
| Doesn't compress stuff like that super well but no worse
| than a sequence of PNGs.
|
| I feel if you're gonna use JS animation anyway, you could
| just use 2 jpegs, one for masking and a canvas.
|
| Hm. Webp is doing darn well these days too.
| https://caniuse.com/webp
|
| Avif isn't an option yet.
| jameshart wrote:
| Very gratified they didn't just post these as rendered
| gifs.
|
| Imagine the social media scare you could generate in a
| year or so after everyone has forgotten about this
| eruption by sharing a graphics.reuters.com URL for one of
| these animations that appears to show a satellite image
| sequence of a massive mushroom cloud obliterating the
| Korean Peninsula or the Sinai with a breathless 'LOOK
| WHAT REUTERS JUST REPORTED!!!' caption.
|
| It's really important for reputable sources posting
| images to think about the fake news potential of them
| getting shared out of context.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Probably more along the line of they have some library
| that uses PNG sequences. Maybe even as simple as a
| slideshow with short durations. It's a newsy site. They
| don't have a lot of control over what their
| CMS/publishing platform can do. Someone probably had a
| clever idea on how to use something existing in a way not
| envisioned when created.
| kaybe wrote:
| How about this tool?
|
| https://evergiven-everywhere.glitch.me/
|
| Granted, it's the Evergiven, but how hard would it be to
| exchange the image?
| goesup12 wrote:
| You can choose the 2022 Tonga eruption example on the tool.
| https://www.leventhalmap.org/projects/insizeor/
| kaybe wrote:
| Oh, nice! Moving around gives a really good feeling for map
| projection too.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I like they handle the relational scaling for you as you
| zoom in/out. I was disappointed at not seeing an option
| for scaling, but nodded appreciation with "it just works"
| aspect
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure, that's fun. That has been taken much further than I
| would have bothered by just placing a cutout on maps and
| saving those images. Somebody had an idea, and just didn't
| stop, and took it to that level. My modern day level of
| "cleverness" would have stopped well before thinking, "ooh,
| integrate into a live website". That is clever and allows
| others to share in the fun.
| kingsloi wrote:
| 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).
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'd like to see what it would have looked like on Mars.
| lambda_dn wrote:
| Wondering if any ships were destroyed by the eruption the scale
| makes me think there had to be?
|
| Could Volcano eruptions be Earth's way of stabilizing climate
| change? i.e. sea water gets warmer and is no longer keeping the
| eruptions from occurring. Then the eruptions causes a drop in
| temperature due to the ash in the atmosphere?
| crakenzak wrote:
| > Then the eruptions causes a drop in temperature due to the
| ash in the atmosphere?
|
| Interesting, this prompted me to read[1] into how it works and
| made me interested in why we don't pump sulfur dioxide into the
| atmosphere to help cool down the planet and buy us more time to
| transition off of CO2/CH4 emitting processes? Is it cost
| prohibitive? We already cloud seed pretty often so there's
| infrastructure in place for a large scale operation?
|
| [1] https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-
| works/how-v...
| codesnik wrote:
| acid rains are no joke either.
| iSnow wrote:
| "But there are at least 27 reasons why stratospheric
| geoengineering may be a bad idea. These include disruption of
| the Asian and African summer monsoons, reducing precipitation
| to the food supply for billions of people; ozone depletion;
| no more blue skies; reduction of solar power; and rapid
| global warming if it stops, with devastating impacts on
| natural ecosystems. "
|
| https://cires.colorado.edu/events/stratospheric-sulfur-
| geoen...
| foobiekr wrote:
| Because ocean acidification is also a problem and we wouldn't
| actually follow through and reduce emissions with the
| borrowed time.
| busyant wrote:
| This is an excellent lesson in how shitty my sense of geographic
| scale is.
|
| I would have guessed that the size of the eruption was on par
| with the size of a small city.
| vanattab wrote:
| I mean your not wrong, the article is illustrating the mushroom
| cloud and ash cloud after 24 hours. So the explosive eruption
| its self is much smaller.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| "Around the time of the initial eruption, a cloud measuring
| 38 km (24 miles) wide is thrust into the atmosphere. Its
| diameter already measures almost twice the length of
| Manhattan, New York. One hour later, it appears to measure
| around 650 km wide, including shock waves around its edge."
|
| One hour.
|
| Sanity check: it's never dark in the animations, which it
| would be if the images were taken over 24 hours. In other
| views you can see the night approaching.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| After 1 hour actually, not 24 hours. But it is really mostly
| a huge ash cloud, not the explosion itself.
| divbzero wrote:
| The Pacific Ocean is ginormous (I think that's the technical
| term?) I often find myself surprised when I spin a globe
| (physical or virtual) and compare the expanse of the ocean to
| my neighborhood of the planet. The scale also makes the history
| of Polynesian seafaring all that more incredible.
| taneq wrote:
| Some experts prefer 'humongous'. ;)
| distribot wrote:
| Yes, they had incredible techniques. They could detect a
| remote island by the way the swell is disrupted. Also
| recently read about Magellan's voyage and it is remarkable
| that they made it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Also recently read about Magellan's voyage and it is
| remarkable that they made it.
|
| Well, they didn't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan#Voyage
|
| > Of the 270 men who left with the expedition, only 18 or
| 19 survivors returned.
|
| A 93% mortality rate really isn't a success by any metric.
| Losing 80% of your ships is nothing to be proud of either.
| obmelvin wrote:
| I don't see the point of your snark. What they did was
| quite hard for the time. What point are you trying to
| make?
| aaron695 wrote:
| [deleted]
| maxdo wrote:
| will the area of eruption eventually become an island?
| pas wrote:
| it was a caldera explosion (hot magma + water = steam)
|
| the island is basically gone:
| https://twitter.com/defis_eu/status/1483020866258714625?
| herpderperator wrote:
| 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.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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 (?)
| wrycoder wrote:
| This reminds me of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, which was
| the first adult book I ever read. It featured a catastrophic
| underwater volcanic explosion. Great book, it's a Robinson
| Crusoe-style sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
|
| Interestingly, Verne wrote the book nine years before the
| Krakatoa explosion. He must have been thinking of Tambora,
| though I'm not sure that eruption was well recognized at the
| time.
| neom wrote:
| I wonder if all that steam condensing would also help contain
| the ash. If it was that much steam I guess as it cooled it
| "rained"?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I ran a quick bit of napkin maths a few days back here on HN.
|
| Based on 6 MT energy release, a maximum of 11 million tonnes
| (or 11 million m^3) of water could have been vapourised.
|
| Liquid-to-gas expansion is on the order of _1,000 times_ ,
| not 70x. This would be 11 km^3 of expansion.
|
| If the erruption yield was higher, and I've seen values of up
| to 50 MT suggested, the amounts would be roughly 9x greater:
| 100 million tonnes and 100 km^3 of steam.
|
| All of this is _very_ rough and is strictly based on the
| quantity of energy and the heat of vapourisation of water.
| Actual quantity of water /steam is likely lower. There's no
| geology involved in the estimate, just physics.
|
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019044
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| 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.
| zo1 wrote:
| I wonder how many _tonnes_ of fish got destroyed, cooked,
| or otherwise thrown many kilometers into the air.
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| I was thinking that too about whales and birds. Some
| species are found only on/around an island or two, like
| many of the Galapagos species.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| At least for once humans were not to blame :)
| datavirtue wrote:
| That sounds delicious
| Retric wrote:
| It should have also significantly reduced the temperature of
| the resulting ash cloud which reduced the quantity of
| particulate matter in the upper atmosphere. Which presumably
| reduces how much short term global cooling you get from the
| eruption.
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