The Astounding Footage NASA Captured Of Tonga’s Volcanic Eruption

The short but intense NASA video of the Tonga eruption circled the world fast and quickly went viral. In the grey-toned footage, a mushroom cloud is seen expanding with incredible force to form a perfect sphere. A column of ash rapidly climbs into the sky. The underwater volcano surrounded by the ocean erupts, breaking the surface. Instantly, the atmospheric shock from the burst pushes clouds and ocean waters away from the eruption’s epicenter. A tsunami moving in all directions soon follows.

NASA explains the video was taken with the GeoColor and Multispectral-blended infrared filters found on the GOES-East Advanced Baseline Imager ABI. The space agency was ready to capture this footage because the Hunga Haápai Volcano had been showing warning signs of an imminent explosion for weeks. The eventual eruption triggered a debate over how prepared tsunami warning systems are for similar future events. One of the greatest lessons learned in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Tsunami, which killed 225,000 people in 12 countries, is the consequences of deficient early warning tsunami systems.

Amid all of this, NOAA tsunami experts say current early warning systems in the U.S. have gaps, issue contradictory warnings, and are in desperate need of both hardware and software updates. Ultimately, the shocking video taken from space by NASA is more than incredible historic footage — it is a display of technology that can be put to work to save lives.