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The term "tsunami" is a borrowing from the Japanese tsunami 津波, meaning "harbour wave."For the plural, one can either follow ordinary English practice and add an s, or use an invariable plural as in the Japanese. [14]
As word of the eruption spread, government agencies on surrounding islands and in places as far away as New Zealand, Japan and even the U.S. West Coast issued tsunami warnings.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami at Ao Nang, Krabi Province, Thailand. A tsunami (/(t) s uː ˈ n ɑː m i, (t) s ʊ ˈ-/ (t)soo-NAH-mee, (t)suu-; from Japanese: 津波, lit. 'harbour wave', pronounced) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake.
Normal tsunamis result from displacement of the sea floor due to movements in the Earth's crust (plate tectonics). Powerful earthquakes may cause the sea floor to displace vertically on the order of tens of metres, which in turn displaces the water column above and leads to the formation of a tsunami.
A tsunami earthquake can be defined as an undersea earthquake for which the surface-wave magnitude M s differs markedly from the moment magnitude M w, because the former is calculated from surface waves with a period of about 20 seconds, whereas the latter is a measure of the total energy release at all frequencies. [2]
A volcanic tsunami, also called a volcanogenic tsunami, is a tsunami produced by volcanic phenomena. About 20–25% of all fatalities at volcanoes during the last 250 years have been caused by volcanic tsunamis. The most devastating volcanic tsunami in recorded history was that produced by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. The waves reached ...
A particularly dangerous form of slow earthquake is the tsunami earthquake, observed where the relatively low felt intensities, caused by the slow propagation speed of some great earthquakes, fail to alert the population of the neighboring coast, as in the 1896 Sanriku earthquake. [25]
Where a continental earthquake will cause damage and loss of life on land from fires, damaged structures, and flying objects; a submarine earthquake alters the seabed, resulting in a series of waves, and depending on the length and magnitude of the earthquake, tsunami, which bear down on coastal cities causing property damage and loss of life.