Tsunami :: physics tsunami

Tsunamis, commonly called tidal waves by the ecumenic public, are large sea waves or surges. These waves can carry a lot of energy from one slope of the globe to the other, reeking mayhem where ever they make landfall, and as shown by the December 26, 2004 SE Asian event, tsunamis can claim thousands of lives and cause millions of dollars worth of damage to property. * Many spate picture large, breaking waves when they hear the word tsunami. This is usually not the case, however. * expertly tsunamis make landfall as little more than a gigantic surge, as if the tide just moved in way too farthest way too fast. * This surging nature of tsunamis is mostly due to the passing long wavelength, customaryly on the order of 100-200km. * A tsunami can moment into a locally, large and breaking wave if the wave energy is concentrated, trim back the wavelength and increasing the amplitude. * This often happens if the wave enters a bay, fjord or similar feature. * Ts unamis can be regional, like the recent tsunami in SE Asia, or localized, like the megatsunami in Lituya Bay, Alaska in 1958. * Regional scale tsunamis are general caused by crustal rebound after a large earthquake, usually associated with a subduction zone * Localized tsunamis are also generally associated with earthquakes, but the corporal cause of the wave is usually due to a land steal or pyroclastic flow.There are several geologic events that can trigger the lengthiness of a tsunami * Earthquakes generally tectonic rebound at or near a subduction zone, when there is a vertical component to crustal movement that displaces a large volume of the overlying water * Landslides often earthquake or volcanically triggered, can be purely submarine or the slide could begin on land and slide into the water (i.e. a collapsing volcano) * volcanic activity usually subaerial, could be pyroclastic flows, lahars, nuees ardants, or collapse of the mountain side * Impact of a l arge meteor or asteroid * A tsunami behaves as a shallow water wave. * Tsunamis travel in lots the same way as your garden variety, wind-propagated water waves with some conclave of transverse and longitudinal movement.