Interesting seeing some of the data coming out now regarding the eruption, seems likely to have the highest number of lightning strikes of any eruption recorded. Admittedly that's limited to how long we've been able to accurately detect and record this but still impressive - I've seen figures of 200,000 + for 'the eruption' which I assume was just the 15th Jan event and 600,000 which I'd assume was including the December activity and earlier fairly large eruption on 14th Jan. There's suggestions that the eruption column may have reached as high as 37km or so, which would again be the highest recorded although think that's TBC as there's contradictory info on that.
The global impacts are pretty astounding too, with at least one component of the Tsunami likely to be as a result of the pressure wave punching down on to the ocean - there's reports of 12cm or so waves affecting the Caribbean, which would pretty much have to have been caused by the pressure wave. It's also possible the explosive eruption itself caused or contributed, along with the possibility of a large amount of material sliding down in to the caldera or ocean floor.
Judging by satellite pictures the 14th Jan event took out a large chunk of the newly formed bit of land between the 2 islands/caldera rim pieces and the 15th Jan looks to have taken out the remainder and a fair bit of the original islands.
For the power of the eruption relatively small amounts of SO2 was emitted and the event itself was relatively brief, unusually so for an eruption of this size. As there's evidence from historic eruptions that the large explosive eruptions from the volcano tend to be a series of events it's possible further eruptions will occur, depending on just how much magma was expelled in this event. I guess how likely further eruptions are will be determined either by a more accurate quantification of the material ejected to compare with possible size of the magma chamber to get an idea of how much eruptive material is left, or by further eruptions occurring over the coming days.
Clearly a tragic event for those affected, but one you can't help but find fascinating.
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