But how did these devastating events come about? To find out, he and his German and Greek colleagues went to the Greek Aegean Sea in 2019 to study the volcanic crater with special technology.
Dr. Gareth Crutchley, co-author of the study: “This allows us to look inside the volcano.” Not only did the 3D imaging show that the crater was 2.5 kilometers in diameter and 500 meters deep, suggesting a truly massive explosion, the seismic profiles also revealed that one flank of the cone had been severely deformed.
Karstens: “According to this, waves of six meters would have been expected at one particular location, but we know from the reports of eyewitnesses that they were 20 meters high there.” Something similar could have happened during the 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano, whose volcanic crater has a similar shape to Kolumbo’s.