The 12 biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history

An aerial view of the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai on the Kingdom of Tonga. History has seen some monstrous volcanic eruptions, from Mount Pinatubo’s weather-cooling burp to the explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai on the island nation of Tonga. The power of such eruptions is measured using the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI), a classification system developed in the 1980 that’s similar to the magnitude scale for earthquakes. The scale goes from 1 to 8, and each succeeding VEI is 10 times greater than the last. There haven’t been any VEI-8 volcanoes in the last 10,000 years, but human…