The eruption created a volcanic cloud with concentric rings of lightning that reached a height of 30 km.

This discovery will help assess the risks of lightning and ash clouds to aircraft and further our understanding of explosive volcanism's impact on the Earth system.

Air acts as an insulator initially, but if enough charge builds up, it can cause a breakdown of the air and allow electricity to travel.

The concentric rings of lightning seen during the Hunga eruption were likely created by superfast energetic waves called gravitational waves, which caused turbulence in the clouds above the volcano.

The eruption went through four phases, with the most lightning observed when the upper umbrella cloud moved away from the volcano and revealed its vent.

During the first phase of the eruption, there was no lightning observed, but the volcanic plume rose and fell.

The second phase was the most powerful, with high-velocity ejections of magma, water vapor, and volcanic gases that reached the stratosphere.

This created an enormous umbrella cloud in the stratosphere and a smaller cloud in the tropopause.

The upper cloud reached a height of 40 km and caused gravitational waves that expanded the rings of lightning.

The extreme lightning observed during the Hunga eruption pushes the boundaries of our understanding of how explosive volcanism impacts the Earth system.