Tsunami

Also called

tidal wave · seismic sea wave · undersea earthquake · sea-floor displacement · wavelength and wave height · shoaling · drawback · run-up · DART buoy · tsunami warning system · Indian Ocean tsunami 2004 · natural hazards · disaster management · coastal disaster · सुनामी · समुद्री भूकंप · चेतावनी प्रणाली · प्राकृतिक आपदा

Topics

• A tsunami is a train of sea waves set off when an earthquake, landslide or eruption suddenly shifts the sea floor.
• The jolt lifts or drops the whole column of water above it; the hump spreads out as waves in every direction.
• In deep water a tsunami is hundreds of kilometres long but only a metre or so high, so ships hardly notice it.
• It travels as fast as a jet aircraft, 500–800 km/h, crossing the Indian Ocean in a few hours.
• Over the shallow shelf the wave slows, its wavelength shrinks and its height grows to many metres.
• Often the sea pulls far back from the shore first: this drawback is a warning to run to high ground at once.
• The crest arrives as a fast-rising flood that surges far inland, not as a breaking surf wave.
• DART buoys sense the pressure of a passing tsunami on the sea floor and relay the alarm by satellite to coastal sirens.
• The 26 December 2004 tsunami, from a quake off Sumatra, killed over two lakh people around the Indian Ocean.

About this model

A GLB file of about 284 KB, shown in Lably's 3D viewer and, on a phone, placed in your room with AR. Credit: Model, science and animation: Lably (built procedurally with three.js; no downloaded meshes). | CC BY 4.0. Original geometry and animation made for Lably.

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