The South Pacific country of Tonga has gained an island. After the massive eruption of an underwater volcano, lava flows have created a new island. However, it is questionable whether it will remain so.
In the South Pacific country of Tonga, a new island has been created by the eruption of an underwater volcano. The volcano, named Home Reef, has been ejecting lava flows since Sept. 10, the Tonga Geological Survey said on Facebook.
Eleven hours after the start of the eruption, an approximately 4,000 square meter island formed above the water surface about 250 kilometers north of the main island of Tongatapu, it said. In the days after the eruption, the island continued to grow rapidly, according to measurements from the Geological Survey. Ten days after the start of the eruption, the area of ??the island had already increased eightfold. It rose 15 meters out of the water, was about 211 meters long and 218 meters wide.
According to the US space agency NASA, it is uncertain whether the newly created island will remain. Islands created by underwater volcanoes often have short lifespans, the agency said in a statement. As early as 1984 and 2006, after eruptions of Home Reef, islands with cliffs of up to 70 meters had formed, which then disappeared again.
The Tonga archipelago, located about 2,300 kilometers northeast of New Zealand in the Pacific, includes around 170 islands. More than a quarter of the 107,000 inhabitants live in the capital Nuku’alofa. At the turn of the year from 2014 to 2015, a month-long eruption of the Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano 65 kilometers north of Nuku’alofa also created a new, two-kilometer-long island. In another massive eruption in early 2022, the island disappeared again.