Solving our current climate crisis is going to take more than changing how we work. Exactly what it will take… With the eruption of a massive volcano in Tonga this weekend, it was hoped maybe the Earth was going to help us out with some good old-fashioned, high-level ash to drop the temperatures. I can tell you that volcano was not the ash monster we need.

The ash in volcanoes is a vile substance that is sharp, readily builds up static, and generates lightning. This lightning, in turn, can be observed by satellites, allowing us to pinpoint active eruptions even in areas of cloud cover and in some cases, understand the evolution of an ash plume based on lightning activity.

As a case study, researchers examined data from the 2020 Taal Volcano eruption in the Philippines. Erupting near a city, this volcano was monitored by both satellites and social media posts from people all around it. In a new paper in the journal Geology, researchers led by Alexa Van Eaton were able to study the eruption in depth using lightning data. According to Van Eaton: The eruption took place in a major urban area, so people posted pictures of volcanic lightning as it was happening. 

And those posts “reveal a highly electrified region at the base of the umbrella cloud.”

Social media is, over and over, allowing researchers to recreate both natural and human-made events. Van Eaton goes on to say: Much more can be done to characterize an eruption when there are camera perspectives from all angles. And understanding the evolution of volcanic lightning helps us recognize the early warning signs of ash hazards to aircraft.

One of the reasons I wanted to cover this story is because, on Sunday, a misunderstood ash report led France’s AFP news agency to put out an alert that the Tonga volcano had a second major eruption. This was misreported in a growing game of telephone by myriad news agencies, and it was the lack of lightning strikes that allowed volcanologist Dr. Janine Krippner to assure me and others on Twitter that those stories were just wrong. So where there’s smoke, there is fire, and where there is a volcanic eruption, there is lightning. When in doubt, look for the electric strikes.

More Information

GSA press release

“Eruption dynamics leading to a volcanic thunderstorm—The January 2020 eruption of Taal volcano, Philippines,” Alexa R. Van Eaton, Cassandra M. Smith, Michael Pavolonis, and Ryan Said, 2022 January 18, Geology