Physics of Tsunamis Essay

The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami was an horrific natural disaster. On Sunday 26th of December 2004 at 7.58 am local time there was an earthquake of a massive magnitude 9 on the Richter scale. The earthquake struck off the northern tip of Sumatra in Indonesia. It was the result of the Indio-Australian Plate subducting below the Eurasian Plate. Indonesia was hit by the tsunami first. Forty-five minutes later it reached Thailand.

The Christmas Day Tsunami was caused by a massive earthquake. There was forces that had been building up for hundreds of years and once they forces were released it caused violent and killer waves to be unleashed. These violent movements of the tectonic plates displaced huge amounts of water which sent powerful shock waves in every direction. The Earthquake that caused the Tsunami was a result of the sliding of the India plates which had been going on for a millennium. The Earth shuddered due to trillions of rocks that were moved. The disturbed seafloor was displaced and created the Tsunami. So many people were caught unprepared because this was something that took time. The forces and sliding of the plates had been happening overtime for years

The Boxing Day Tsunami had occurred on the 26th of December 2004. The tsunami had started under water, in the Indian Ocean. The cause of the tsunami was that the Indo-Australian plate had subducted below the Eurasian plate, this process is called a convergent plate boundary. This resulted with an underwater earthquake, making waves approximately 20-30 metres high and travelling at speeds up to 500km/ph. Theses waves travelled throughout Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand and left each country in terrible conditions. The earthquake that occurred underwater had

As survivors from the quake rushed around in fear and confusion, they were greeted by yet another disaster. Shortly after the earthquake, a tsunami occurred. The tsunami’s waves struck the coastline beginning at twenty feet. But as more waves hit the coast, the height of the tsunami grew to just under forty feet, taking out everything that hadn’t already been destroyed by the earthquake, reducing the entire city to rubble. The tsunami stretched across sixty-two miles of coastline near Messina, and another twenty-four miles of coastline near Calabria. The damage from the tsunami was greater near the Calabria coast, where waves were higher and the water quickly swallowed houses and bridges, and flooded rivers. The tsunami that occurred in Messina still holds the title for one of the biggest tsunamis in today’s history. Recently, however, geologists have revisited origin of the tsunami, which is now widely debated. Some

All along the coast of Central America the tsunami was observed. (February 4, 1965, Alaska Earthquake, Rat Islands, Magnitude 8.7) This earthquake was recorded at a magnitude 8.7 and caused a big tsunami of over 10 m on Shemya Island. It barely caused any damage, though. Just two months after the initial shock, an aftershock earthquake at a magnitude of 7.6 hit the same area. (March 28, 2005, Sumatra Earthquake aka Nias Earthquake) Just off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, was a devastating earthquake that killed 1,300 people. A majority of the devastation occurred on the island of Nias. The massive earthquake sparked a panic around countries along the Indian Ocean because there was a massive tsunami just three months earlier in December. ( August 15, 1950, Assam, Tibet Earthquake, Magnitude 8.6) There were at least 780 people who died in this 8.6 magnitude earthquake. Many buildings completely collapsed in areas of Eastern Tibet. Landslides and ground cracks/fractures ended up washing away and entire village. The village of Yedong collapsed into the Yarlung Zangbo River and literally washed

This generated one of the deadliest tsunamis known to mankind, killing over 230,000 people and leaving over two million people displaced. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in the Indian Ocean, right off the west coast of Sumatra. The tectonic plates beneath the ocean floor had been colliding and building up pressure for hundreds of years, until this day when subduction occurred between the Indian and the Burma plates. The process of subduction displaced billions of tons of water, creating waves that traveled towards the shorelines at hundreds of miles per hour and as high as sixty to one hundred feet. There was absolutely no warning for the people of Southeast Asia, as the tsunami progressed quite rapidly. (National Geographic,

The morning of December 26, the peaceful morning was cut short of by a massive earthquake that struck off Indonesia causing a deadly tsunami The earthquake was described as having the power of 23,000 Hiroshima bombs, reaching a magnitude of 9.0. After the tsunami started it travels 13 countries and left beaches filled

The word tsunami comes from a Japanese word meaning “Long harbor waives”. Tsunami is much known and very common in Japan because thousands of Japanese have been killed and some suffered in recent centuries. Tsunami waves generally speaking cause a lot of damages such as, killing people, destroying building, and costing million of dollars. Moreover, a tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that is located on epicenter off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, is actually one of the worst disasters in the history of Indian Ocean that generated by the most powerful 9.0 magnitude earthquake. An aggressive

Our first natural disaster is a Tsunami. In October of 2014 was when the last tsunami in Hawaii occurred. Most tsunamis are triggered by an earthquake. This tsunami was triggered by an earthquake 3,072 miles away in Alaska. It still caused waves all over the world and killed 3 people. One of our first methods of prevention

too much weight is put upon an underwater slope. The underwater avalanches can then trigger

On the day of December 26 of 2004 there was an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia that caused massive Waves raging havoc and killing of an estimated 230,000 people the earthquake magnitude was a 9.3 this magnitude was as close as the earthquake chili incident in 1960 except this event had happened at sea instead of happening on land if this incident had occurred on land the devastation would have been on a larger scale

An earthquake shook northeastern japan on March 11, 2011. It was a magnitude -9 earthquake so it caused a savage tsunami. The great earthquake was felt around the world from the antarctica's ice sheet and norway’s fjords. Even years later things are getting washed up on north America s beaches. 250 miles of japan’s coastline Honshu dropped almost 2 feet . The jolt moved 8 feet of Honshu eastward. The tsunami broke icebergs in parts of Antarctica such as Sulzberger ice shelves.

This tsunami happened because of an earthquake. The earthquake happened in southeastern Alaska, it was called the significant earthquake. The earthquake was caused by a shifting of the fair weather fault. The fair weather fault is a transform fault close to the Lituya Bay. This fair weather fault is very special because it has the ability to shift oceanic crust. When ocean crust begins to shift tsunami can begin to happen. This earthquake was so large that is what recorded as a level IX in the mercalli

Tsunamis act very differently from typical surf swells; they are phenomena which move the entire depth of the ocean (often several kilometres deep) rather than just

The Tsunami Disaster At 0059 GMT on 26 December 2004, a magnitude 9.3 earthquake ripped apart the seafloor off the coast of northwest Sumatra. Over 100 years of accumulated stress was released in the second biggest earthquake in recorded history.