The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted underwater with a force equivalent to hundreds of atomic bombs, unleashing a 15-meter (50-foot) tsunami which demolished homes and killed at least three people on the Pacific island kingdom.

The natural disaster also damaged undersea communication cables, cutting Tonga off from the rest of the world for weeks and hampering efforts to help the victims.

A detailed study by New Zealand's national institute for water and atmospheric research shows the eruption blasted out almost 10 cubic kilometers of material—equivalent to 2.6 million Olympic-sized swimming pools—and fired debris more than 40 kilometers (25 miles) into the mesosphere, the level above the Earth's stratosphere.

"The eruption reached record heights, being the first we've ever seen to break through into the mesosphere," said marine geologist Kevin Mackay.

"It was like a shotgun blast directly into the sky."

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption rivals the infamous Krakatoa disaster which killed tens of thousands in Indonesia in 1883 before the invention of modern measuring equipment.

"While this eruption was large—one of the biggest since Krakatoa—the difference here is that it's an underwater volcano and it's also part of the reason we got such big tsunami waves," Mackay added.