The enormous energy of a tsunami can lift giant boulders, flip vehicles, and demolish houses. In other places witnesses described a rapid surging of the ocean.įlooding can extend inland by a thousand feet (300 meters) or more. The Indian Ocean tsunami caused waves as high as 30 feet (9 meters) in some places, according to news reports. Most tsunamis cause the sea to rise no more than 10 feet (3 meters). In other places tsunamis have been known to surge vertically as high as 100 feet (30 meters). In some places a tsunami may cause the sea to rise vertically only a few inches or feet. Geological features such as reefs, bays, river entrances, and undersea formations may dissipate the energy of a tsunami.The top of the wave moves faster than the bottom, causing the sea to rise dramatically. Once a tsunami reaches shallow water near the coast it is slowed down. But the powerful shock wave of energy travels rapidly through the ocean as fast as a commercial jet. A tsunami may be less than a foot (30 centimeters) in height on the surface of the open ocean, which is why they are not noticed by sailors.Scientists are able to calculate arrival times of tsunamis in different parts of the world based on their knowledge of when the event that generated them occurred, water depths, and distances. When the ocean is deep tsunamis can travel unnoticed on the surface at speeds up to 500 miles per hour (800 kilometers per hour), crossing the entire ocean in a day or less.( Read the story) As Fast as a Commercial Jet Scientists say that a great earthquake of magnitude 9 struck the Pacific Northwest in 1700, and created a tsunami that caused flooding and damage on the Pacific coast of Japan. The Indian Ocean tsunami traveled as much as 3,000 miles (nearly 5,000 kilometers) to Africa, arriving with sufficient force to kill people and destroy property. They are able to cross entire oceans without great loss of energy. Tsunami waves can be very long (as much as 60 miles, or 100 kilometers) and be as far as one hour apart.The first wave in a tsunami is not necessarily the most destructive.
#Huge ocean waves series#
A tsunami is not a single wave but a series of waves, also known as a wave train.An earthquake generates a tsunami if it is of sufficient force and there is violent movement of the earth causing substantial and sudden displacement of a massive amount of water.Tsunamis are fairly common in Japan and many thousands of Japanese have been killed by them in recent centuries. Tsunami (pronounced soo-NAH-mee) is a Japanese word.The coastline of the continents was changed drastically and almost all life on land was exterminated. Scientists have found traces of an asteroid-collision event that they say would have created a giant tsunami that swept around the Earth several times, inundating everything except the mountains 3.5 billion years ago. More rarely, a tsunami can be generated by a giant meteor impact with the ocean. A tsunami is a series of great sea waves caused by an underwater earthquake, landslide, or volcanic eruption.In the wake of the Christmas weekend tsunami in the Indian Ocean, one of the worst disasters in history, National Geographic News examines the killer waves' causes and warning signs-information that can be a lifesaver in a tsunami zone. But every ocean has generated the scourges. Tsunamis have been relatively rare in the Indian Ocean. Within hours killer waves radiating from the epicenter slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, snatching people out to sea, drowning others in their homes or on beaches, and demolishing property from Africa to Thailand. A violent movement of the Earth's tectonic plates displaced an enormous amount of water, sending powerful shock waves in every direction. Geological Survey, which monitors earthquakes worldwide. The epicenter of the 9.0 magnitude quake was under the Indian Ocean near the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to the U.S. The Indian Ocean tsunami generated by the most powerful earthquake in decades on December 26 is believed to have killed more than 150,000 people and made millions homeless, making it perhaps the most destructive tsunami in history.
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