Tremor & Tide

Series B · The Day It Happened · Ep. 02 · 15:40 · 11 Nov 2026

Why Was Hunga Tonga So Powerful? The Answer Was Underwater

Thumbnail · AI reconstruction

Premieres WED 11 NOV · 10:00 CDMX

The video link appears here once the premiere is scheduled.

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Chapters

  1. 0:00 The cloud that reached the mesosphere
  2. 0:57 The volcano hidden under the sea
  3. 2:20 The warning signs before the eruption
  4. 3:58 Why was the Tonga eruption so powerful?
  5. 5:23 The eruption seen from space
  6. 7:00 The Tonga eruption shockwave
  7. 7:55 What seawater cannot explain
  8. 9:10 The Tonga tsunami, minute by minute
  9. 10:52 The answer was underwater
  10. 12:50 What changed after Hunga Tonga
  11. 13:57 What we still don't know

Sources & credits

Sources

  1. 01
    Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05
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  7. 07
  8. 08
  9. 09
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20

Footage and images

NASA Earth Observatory (Joshua Stevens; GOES imagery courtesy of NOAA and NESDIS; Landsat 8 data from the USGS). NASA Langley (stereo plume heights from GOES-17 and Himawari-8). NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (Himawari data: JMA). NOAA / NESDIS, GOES-17. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022). Coastlines: Natural Earth.

Some scenes are AI reconstructions or AI illustrations and are labelled on screen. Diagrams are redrawn and simplified. Original music.

Thumbnail: AI reconstruction. Made for Tremor & Tide (Nexlev Thumbnail Lab, GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst).

AI & archive disclosure

This episode mixes real archive (always labeled) with AI reconstructions and simulations (always labeled). No AI image is presented as a photograph of a real event.

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