Height of #HungaTonga eruption looks to have been around 30 km, from space-based lidar. CREDIT: Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) data on NASA site via Dr Ghassan Taha. ozoneaq.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aerosols/… science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/bio/ghassa… 
Note: The 2014 Kelud eruption observed on lidar showed comprehensively that if you get the lidar over the right spot, you can see very high tops! 30 km is prob not the actual top. Nor did we see how high the much larger Pinabuto eruption really went. volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn…
Important to NOT rush to height comparisons of eruptions from different eras of observation or to derive VEIs. In particular ground and space-based observations often don't correlate (see sciencedirect.com/science/articl…), and space-based obs are getting better as time marches on
Also (side issue), we've learnt more about the importance of moist convection and tropopause height on eruption height (eg see researchgate.net/publication/22… ). So what's important is the height that the eruption has gone above tropopause, not absolute height. It's still v. big though!
Correction on original tweet above - this is from the limb profiler (not lidar) - my bad. amt.copernicus.org/articles/11/26…
and update on all the above... lidar is also saying 30+ km, but more recent OMPS Limb Profiler data has caught a glimpse of a bit of higher material at around 35 km.
https://twitter.com/andrewcraigtupp/status/1483278799546765312?s=20
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