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Talk:2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai eruption and tsunami

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Lightning flashes

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I am questioning the accuracy of the paragraph about number of lightning flashes observed during the eruption: From 14 to 15 January 2022, tens of thousands of lightning flashes occurred. Between 05:00 and 06:00 UTC on 15 January 2022, 200,000 flashes were recorded.

The two sources given are National Geographic and a Tweet. The Twitter source claims a peak of 200,000 flashes per hour, and cumulative flashes over 11 hours totaling nearly four million. I can't read the whole NG article because it is paywalled, but from I did see, the peak rate was 5-6,000 per minute, which is compatible with the Tweet. However, a just published study (open access) covered by SciTechDaily says, The eruption produced just over 192,000 flashes (made up of nearly 500,000 electrical pulses), peaking at 2,615 flashes per minute. I have very little background on this topic, so I'm putting this here for any other editors deeper into the material to have a look at.

The factoid revealed in the study that drew me here is: Our analysis demonstrates that the 15 January eruption produced 2,615 flashes min−1 at its peak intensity (04:53), representing the most intense electrical storm ever detected by global networks (Table S3 in Supporting Information S1). This peak lightning rate is significantly higher than the next most lightning-rich case study in our analysis (cf. 993 flashes min−1, Table S3 in Supporting Information S1). but I wouldn't want to put it in the article unless the discrepancies I've noted are resolved. Xan747 (talk) 19:27, 23 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Eruption VEI

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The VEI of the eruption seems still up to debate, or uncertain as it's in borderline territory 5-6? I have found this article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf5493 evaluating it as VEI=6.3, article which isn't featured on this Wikipedia page. My English isn't good enough to add it to the page in a satisfying manner though. 2A01:CB1D:815B:6200:39AF:DFB2:9952:B4BA (talk) 18:05, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]