Related topics: japan · quake · earthquake · nuclear power plant · fukushima

Unique Japan tsunami footage boon to scientists

Vision of the disastrous tsunami rolling onto Japan after last week's massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake will provide valuable data to scientists for years to come, Australian experts said Wednesday.

Aerial surveys document ocean debris around Hawaii

A study of the eight main Hawaiian Islands shows that ocean debris regularly accumulates around the archipelago, and that most of it is not linked to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, state officials said Tuesday.

Japan opts for massive, costly sea wall to fend off tsunamis

Four years after a towering tsunami ravaged much of Japan's northeastern coast, efforts to fend off future disasters are focusing on a nearly 400-kilometer (250-mile) chain of cement sea walls, at places nearly five stories ...

Japan 'plans solar panels for all new buildings'

Japan is considering a plan that would make it compulsory for all new buildings and houses to come fitted with solar panels by 2030, a business daily said Sunday.

Voyager 1 revealing regularity of interstellar shock waves

(Phys.org)—The "tsunami wave" that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing earlier this year is still propagating outward, according to new results. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen ...

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Tsunami

A tsunami (津波?) (pronounced /(t)suːˈnɑːmi/) is a series of water waves (called a tsunami wave train) that is caused when a large volume of a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. The Japanese term is literally translated into "harbor wave."

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (detonations of nuclear devices at sea), landslides and other mass movements, bolide impacts, and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved, the effects of tsunamis can be devastating.

The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunami to submarine quakes, but understanding of the nature of tsunami remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.

Many early geological, geographical, and oceanographic texts refer to tsunamis as "seismic sea waves."

Some meteorological conditions, such as deep depressions that cause tropical cyclones, can generate a storm surge, called a meteotsunami, which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore, they may resemble (though are not) tsunamis, inundating vast areas of land. Such a storm surge inundated Burma (Myanmar) in May 2008.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA