Fukushima Tsunami Research

The intensity of the earthquake was a major factor because its magnitude played a huge role in the damage that the disaster caused. It was reported to have hit a magnitude of 9-0 with the epicenter being located at least 80 miles away. The focus was 18.6 miles lower than the western Pacific. The result was a rapture of the subduction zone and thus led to the Japan Trench being affected. Several foreshocks reached as much as 6.0 and greater effects that ended up acting on the land in the following days and months even after the quake had subsided. The tsunami that accompanied the earthquake originated from a fault along the convergent plate boundary at the section where the Pacific plate joins with the west beneath Japan. The subduction zone was very active seismically at the time of the occurrence of the earthquake. Thus based on my understanding of earthquakes, the March 11 disaster was among the strongest earthquakes ever recorded because of the effects that followed because a portion of the ocean trench immediately went off-shore. In fact, it was later reported that a satellite that was orbiting around the Earth, infrasonics could be detected on the outer edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. The low-frequency waves meant that there were adverse effects that could be felt weeks after the real disaster had hit, hence the reporting that it was the

unusual flow of warm air from the south has caused the ice to melt at an alarming rate, so

For many years now, scientists have believed that our climate is changing. This climate change has caused water currents up north, near Antarctica to shift leading to warm waters taking the place of the usual cold arctic waters. Warm water melts the glaciers and causes the top of the glaciers to float off into the sea, allowing the warm water to melt even more glaciers. The extra glacier melting into our sea has caused the sea levels to raise and the

It had caused a Tsunami and a landslide and ports, schools, airports, and hospitals collapsed (Background Essay). Natural Disasters happen when Tectonic Plates

Tsunamis are usually caused by tectonic displacement of the ocean floor often resulting in an underwater earthquake. This happened on Boxing Day in 2004 in the Indian Ocean where there was a 1000km thrust fault from a release of stress along the constructive-destructive plate boundary. No technology was in place to detect such a disaster and, although scientists knew a tsunami was likely to hit Southern Asia, most of the warnings were too late and the first TV broadcasts in Thailand even happened after the waves had hit. Up to 290,000 people were killed and thousands of bodies are still missing to this day. Since this disaster, a tsunami warning system has been put in place in the Indian Ocean and technology such as this is almost guaranteed to prevent such a high death toll for the future. There is a strong argument that if such technology was implemented before 2004, then thousands of lives could have been saved through evacuation and similar measures. Technology is the best way to reduce the impacts of earthquakes because they can predict a upcoming earthquake, allowing residents of an area time to evacuate to safe land, saving many lives. However, there are many other ways of reducing the impacts of earthquakes and technology has its limitations.

The effect of a tsunami are can also be global as in the 2004 tsunami that hit many countries and killed citizens of many other

In the article, ¨Indian Ocean Tsunami; Then and Now¨ by Lucy Rodgers and Gerry Fletcher the text says, ¨About 228,000 people were killed as a result of the 9.1 magnitude quake and the giant waves that slammed into coastlines.¨ Anything can happen at any time, and everybody living in that area were not expecting a tsunami to hit out of nowhere, causing 228,000 of them to get killed. On page 48, the text says, ¨For as far as Ruslan could see, Meulaboh had become a lake, clogged with floating debris.¨ Everything in the city was basically gone, all because nobody saw anything coming and nobody was prepared. Finally, on page 78, the text says, ¨A man stared at him with wide, and bulging eyes. Unblinking eyes, rigid with death. Around him were several more corpses, caught in the brush like debris.¨ Thousands people got killed and hurt, because a tsunami hit out of

The loss of sea ice, due to melting, affects climate patterns and amplifies global warming.

Now, due to global warming, the glaciers and ice shelves are beginning to disappear. The ice deflects 90% of the sun’s rays back into the atmosphere, absorbing only 10%. But when the ice is surrounded by water, the glacier melting increases drastically due to the open ocean water absorbs the sun’s rays instead of reflecting them. This causes the ocean temperature to rise and the surrounding ice to melt much quicker.

ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. Every year, sea levels

Pine island Glacier is an enormous stream of ice flowing west-northwest along the south of Hudson mountains into the Amundsen Sea in Antarctica. This ice sheet is the largest chunk of ice on planet Earth having a volume of a water equivalent to 57m of the global sea level. Hence, this basin has the largest net contribution of ice to the sea in the world. In the past few decades, the pine island glacier has been melting at an irreversible rate. Studies show that the ground line of the glacier has retreated 10 kilometres and is in the process of touching a 40 kilometre retreat. The glacier has been losing approximately 20 billion tons of ice each year for the past quarter of the century and is estimated to lose four times the ice in the coming quarter.

One the largest tsunamis in recent history was the Cascadia tsunami in 1700. This occured when two continental plates (stretching from Vancouver to California) slipped causing a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. The resulting tsunami stretched across the entire Pacific and is recorded in Japanese history. Researchers have

The ice surface across the globe is receding at an alarming rate year after year, as the water and globe warm the ice is not able to stay frozen.

The tsunami in Thailand that occurred on December 26, 2004, was by far the largest tsunami catastrophe in human history. It was triggered by a magnitude 9.1-9.3 earthquake along the Indian-Australian seduction zone off the northern coast of Sumatra. The tsunami waves traveled primarily in the east to west direction and caused major damage along the coasts of southern Thailand. Unpredictably, it was a violent earthquake beneath the sea that initiated the massive waves and struck more than a dozen countries in Southern Asia. It also destroyed thousands of miles of coastline and even submerged entire islands permanently.

The Indian Ocean tsunami happened after a massive earthquake hit somewhere south of the Indian Ocean. The energy from the earthquake itself released more than every single explosive that was detonated in world war 2 including the nuclear bombs. The earthquake caused Tsunamis all the way up to 30 meters high. The wave smashed into Indonesia, South Asia, and the west coast of Africa. Punching as deep as 2 kilometers inland in some places. The damage in these places was often extensive.