The January volcanic eruption near the Pacific island of Tonga has been confirmed as the biggest eruption ever recorded by modern instruments. Its explosion also surpassed any atomic bomb tests conducted after World War II. The assessment came in a pair of scientific papers published in the journal Science. According to the researchers behind the papers, only the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 comes close to the Tonga explosion, caused by the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai.