Exploring Tonga's underwater volcano from 16,000 kilometers away

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-09-19 12:03

New Zealand; Pacific; International

IMAGE: From paper. CC by 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The submarine crater of Tonga's Hunga volcano was still active seven months after the massive 2022 eruption, according to NZ and American researchers. The researcher duo studied the undersea activity from more than 16,000 km away, using an uncrewed vessel whose instruments directly measured water properties in the 850 m deep crater. The team says the successful mission shows the technology's potential to contribute more broadly to ocean exploration and monitoring.

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Research American Geophysical Union, Web page

Journal/
conference: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: GNS Science

Funder: The TESMaP project was funded by the Nippon Foundation and managed by NIWA. CEJdR was funded by GNS Science through the New Zealand Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF). SLW was funded by the Earth-Ocean Interactions program at NOAA-PMEL. This is PMEL contribution number 5613.

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