Natural history

I have just completed another collection developed along the lines of my La Palma volcano inspired water colours. This one, long overdue, is another part of my ‘natural history’ series. In the same year as La Palma in 2022, there was an extraodinary volcanic event in the South Pacific, the biggest on record for the 21st Century. I had to go back to NASA to get my facts straight.

‘When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.‘

Throwing out steam on the way, this was the biggest explosion in the atmosphere, one hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. As falling debris came down out of the layers of the mesosphere, meeting the sea with colossal volume and force, the pyroclastic lava flow underwater, travelled at speeds of over 120 miles per hour. I can not imagine how this impacted on the micro worlds of coral and fishes underwater, but I have tried to commit the intensity and significance of this moment to paper.

Susie