Press Releases

According to the observations of the automatic meteorological stations at Larnaka and Pafos Airports, a sudden and intense variation on atmospheric pressure field was recorded in the area of Cyprus, around 22:00 local time, on the 15^th of January 2022. This variation is due to the shock wave caused by the eruption of the underwater volcano in the Tonga Islands complex, in the Pacific Ocean.

It is noted that the atmospheric pressure in Cyprus suddenly rose approximately by 2 hPa and immediately declined approximately by 3.5 hPa, until it was rebalanced.

A similar phenomenon was observed in August 2020 during the huge explosion in the port of Beirut.

It is reported that intense variations in atmospheric pressure are also observed during thunderstorm activity in an area.   

Below are the barograms (distribution of atmospheric pressure) of Larnaka and Pafos airports. The vertical axis refers to atmospheric pressure and the horizontal axis refers to time. The red line indicates the intense atmospheric change.

(NG/SCH)