The eruption of the Tonga volcano on January 15 caused a tsunami and a sonic boom that circled the earth twice, NASA writes. An underwater eruption in the South Pacific also sent a huge plume of steam into the stratosphere, enough to fill 58,000 Olympic swimming pools. A large amount of vapor may be enough to temporarily affect the average global temperature.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” commented Luis Millan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is leading a study of the eruption’s aftermath.

In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists estimate that about 146 teragrams of water vapor (1 teragram equals one trillion grams) was ejected into the Earth’s stratosphere as a result of the Tonga volcano eruption. That’s equal to 10% of the water that exists in this layer, and nearly four times the amount researchers estimate from the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the Philippines.

Volcanic eruptions, NASA notes, rarely inject much water into the stratosphere. In 18 years of research, only two – Casatochi in Alaska in 2008 and Calbuco in Chile in 2015 – have sent significant amounts of water vapor to such a height. However, in previous eruptions, the water vapor dissipated quickly, while the excess from Tonga could remain in the stratosphere for several years.

They can affect the chemical composition of the atmosphere, intensifying certain reactions that can temporarily damage the ozone layer. It can also temporarily affect the temperature as water vapor traps heat.

• VIDEO Tsunami in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean after a violent eruption of an underwater volcano
• VIDEO Eruption of the Tonga volcano from space / What damage it caused