tsunami

tsunami, catastrophic ocean wave, usually caused by a submarine earthquake, an underwater or coastal landslide, or a volcanic eruption. The term tidal wave is frequently used for such a wave, but it is a misnomer, for the wave has no connection with the tides.

Origin and development

After an earthquake or other generating impulse occurs, a train of simple, progressive oscillatory waves is propagated great distances over the ocean surface in ever-widening circles, much like the waves produced by a pebble falling into a shallow pool. In deep water a tsunami can travel as fast as 800 km (500 miles) per hour. The wavelengths are enormous, sometimes exceeding 500 km (about 310 miles), but the wave amplitudes (heights) are very small, only about 30 to 60 cm (1 to 2 feet). The waves’ periods (the lengths of time for successive crests or troughs to pass a single point) are very long, varying from five minutes to more than an hour. These long periods, coupled with the extremely low steepness and height of the waves, enables them to be completely obscured in deep water by normal wind waves and swell. A ship on the high seas experiences the passage of a tsunami as an insignificant rise and fall of only half a metre (1.6 feet), lasting from five minutes to an hour or more.

As the waves approach the coast of a continent, however, friction with the rising sea bottom reduces the velocity of the waves. As the velocity lessens, the wavelengths become shortened and the wave amplitudes (heights) increase. Coastal waters may rise as high as 30 metres (about 100 feet) above normal sea level in 10 to 15 minutes. The continental shelf waters begin to oscillate after the rise in sea level. Between three and five major oscillations generate most of the damage, frequently appearing as powerful “run-ups” of rushing water that uproot trees, pull buildings off their foundations, carry boats far inshore, and wash away entire beaches, peninsulas, and other low-lying coastal formations. Frequently the succeeding outflow of water is just as destructive as the run-up or even more so. In any case, oscillations may continue for several days until the ocean surface reaches equilibrium.

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Much like any other water waves, tsunamis are reflected and refracted by the topography of the seafloor near shore and by the configuration of a coastline. As a result, their effects vary widely from place to place. Occasionally, the first arrival of a tsunami at a coast may be the trough of the wave, in which case the water recedes and exposes the shallow seafloor. Such an occurrence took place in the bay of Lisbon, Portugal, on November 1, 1755, after a large earthquake; many curious people were attracted to the bay floor, and a large number of them were drowned by the wave crest that followed the trough only minutes later.

Notable tsunamis

One of the most destructive tsunamis in antiquity took place in the eastern Mediterranean Sea on July 21, 365 ce. A fault slip in the subduction zone beneath the island of Crete produced an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 8.0–8.5, which was powerful enough to raise parts of the western third of the island up to 10 metres (33 feet). The earthquake spawned a tsunami that claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused widespread damage throughout the Mediterranean, from islands in the Aegean Sea westward to the coast of present-day Spain. Tsunami waves pushed ships over harbour walls and onto the roofs of houses in Alexandria, Egypt, while also ruining nearby croplands by inundating them with salt water.

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Disasters of Historic Proportion

Perhaps the most destructive tsunami in recorded history took place on December 26, 2004, after an earthquake of magnitude 9.1 displaced the ocean floor off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Two hours later, waves as high as 9 metres (30 feet) struck the eastern coasts of India and Sri Lanka, some 1,200 km (750 miles) away. Within seven hours of the quake, waves washed ashore on the Horn of Africa, more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) away on the other side of the Indian Ocean. More than 200,000 people were killed, most of them on Sumatra but thousands of others in Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka and smaller numbers in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Maldives, Somalia, and other locations.

On March 11, 2011, seafloor displacement resulting from a magnitude-9.0 earthquake in the Japan Trench of the Pacific Ocean created a large tsunami that devastated much of the eastern coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu. Waves measuring as much as 10 metres (33 feet) high struck the city of Sendai and other low-lying coastal regions of Miyagi prefecture as well as coastal areas in the prefectures of Iwate, Fukushima, Ibaraki, and Chiba. The tsunami also instigated a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station along the coast.

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One of the most notable prehistoric tsunamis took place during the K-T extinction, a global extinction event that eliminated approximately 80 percent of all animal species about 66 million years ago. Many scientists argue that the event was mostly caused by the impact of a large meteor or comet on the Yucatán Peninsula near Chicxulub, Mexico. The impact caused an enormous 1.6-km- (1-mile) tall tsunami that washed up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the islands of the Caribbean before propagating across the Atlantic Ocean and other ocean basins.

Other tsunamis of note include those that followed the spectacular explosive eruption of the Krakatoa (Krakatau) volcano on August 26 and 27, 1883, and the Chile earthquake of 1960. A series of blasts from Krakatoa submerged the island of Rakata between Sumatra and Java, creating waves as high as 35 metres (115 feet) in many East Indies localities, and killed more than 36,000 people. The largest earthquake ever recorded (magnitude 9.5) took place in 1960 off the coast of Chile, and it caused a tsunami that killed approximately 2,000 people in Chile, 61 people 15 hours later in Hawaii, and 122 people 22 hours later in Japan.