Tsunami :: physics tsunami

Tsunamis, commonly called tidal draw ins by the general public, atomic number 18 queen-size sea waves or surges. These waves back tooth carry a lot of heartiness from one side of the globe to the other, reeking havoc where ever they take aim landfall, and as shown by the December 26, 2004 SE Asian event, tsunamis can consider thousands of lives and cause millions of dollars worth of damage to property. * Many people picture coarse, gaolbreak waves when they hear the word tsunami. This is usually not the case, however. * Most tsunamis make landfall as little more than a gigantic surge, as if the tide exclusively moved in elbow room besides far way too fast. * This surging nature of tsunamis is mostly due to the extremely long wavelength, by and large on the order of 100-200km. * A tsunami can turn into a locally, large and breaking wave if the wave energy is concentrated, shortening the wavelength and increasing the amplitude. * This oftentimes happens if the wave enters a bay, fjord or similar feature. * Tsunamis 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 * situate tsunamis are also in general associated with earthquakes, but the physical cause of the wave is usually due to a landslide or pyroclastic flow.There are several geologic events that can trigger the propagation of a tsunami * Earthquakes generally tectonic rebound at or near a subduction zone, when at that place is a vertical component to crustal movement that displaces a large tidy sum 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, laha rs, nuees ardants, or collapse of the mountain side * Impact of a large meteor or asteroid * A tsunami behaves as a shallow water wave. * Tsunamis travel in much the same way as your garden variety, wind-propagated water waves with some combination of transverse and longitudinal movement.