On August 4 , 2020 , the port of Beirut , the capital of Lebanon , was the theater of a tragic explosion . A freight of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrates exploded , one of thelargest hokey non - atomic explosionsin account . The devasting event kill 210 hoi polloi , injured 7,500 others , and left 300,000 citizenry dispossessed .
An international team of scientist has now published finding detailing the gist that the attack had on the outer stratum of the atmosphere , the ionosphere . It turns out that the Beirut blowup rival the effects antecedently seen in volcanic clap . The finding are published inScientific Reports .
The ionosphere as the name hint is the ionise part of Earth ’s upper atmospheric state , protract from 48 to 965 kilometers ( 30 to 600 miles ) up . Solar radioactivity that murder mote in this area ionise them , severalise the negatron from said corpuscle . The ionosphere can be disturbed by blank space result like geomagnetic storms but also by thing bump on the ground . And not just raw events like volcanic irruption . Human activity sham it ; nuclear trial are an uttermost example of that .
variety to the ionosphere can be measured in an interesting way . They affect GPS signals . modest changes are usually taken into account by GPS telephone receiver and transmitters , but for unusual events , the signaling can be used as a direction to contemplate the ionosphere .
The explosion in Beirut generated a wafture through the ionosphere that had a order of magnitude larger than what was created by the Asama vent outbreak in Japan in 2004 . Other eruptions in the Nipponese archipelago that have chance over the last X or so have been comparable in magnitude to the Beirut event .
“ We found that the blast generated a wave that traveled in the ionosphere in a southwards direction at a velocity of around 0.8 kilometre ( 0.5 miles ) per 2d , ” carbon monoxide - writer Kosuke Heki , from the University of Hokkaido , said in astatement .
The explosion was due to badly stack away ammonium nitrate ( predominantly used as a fertilizer and as an ingredient in explosive ) that had been abandoned in a warehouse back in 2014 . A fire broke out in the storage warehouse , that also stored fireworks . These exploded first , with a force equivalent to about 2 ton of TNT . About half a minute afterwards , the whole deposit exploded with a force equivalent to 1.1 kiloton of TNT , similar to that of a low - yield nuclear bomb .
The explosion was heard in Cyprus over 240 kilometers ( 150 naut mi ) away . It was recorded by the United States Geological Survey as a seismal event of magnitude 3.3 , and left a cratervisible from orbit140 metre ( 460 feet ) across .
