About two weeks ago, a seafloor ridge that stretches from New Zealand to Tonga shook again. This time another underwater volcano was brimming for eruption and on September 10 it exploded throwing lava and gas into the air. Eleven hours after the eruption, a new island stood above the water surface.
The new island that has emerged above the water’s surface has been detected by the Landsat 9 satellite’s Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2). The eruption and the new island occurred months after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano’s enormous explosion, which sent gases and ash approximately 1,28,000 feet into the air and lasted for 10 minutes.
The new island is located southwest of Late Island, northeast of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, and northwest of Mo‘unga‘one.
A few days later, the new island and the volcano that was erupting gases were photographed by a satellite as plumes of murky water moved close by. The island is thought to be roughly 4,000 square metres, or about an acre, in size, and is 10 metres above sea level, according to researchers.
Since its creation, the island has expanded to a size of 24,000 square metres, or 6 acres.
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