Tsunami Questions
 

Do any of you have any tsunami questions or concerns you wish to raise at this time?

Since you asked, yes. How many chances there are to have tsunamis in Europe?

Romy

Hi, Romy! :wavey:

The chance of tsunami in Europe is 100%. European shores have been affected, & will continue to be affected, though at a lower frequency than some other shorelines around the world (for example, Japan, Alaska, Hawaii, Chile, Java, Sumatra).

European Commission: http://ec.europa.eu/research/star/in....cfm?p=32_main

Athena Web: http://www.athenaweb.org/films-libra...g-1000712.html

Tsunami risks are present in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, even the North Sea.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...441819,00.html

One of the most historic tsunami in all of human history struck Lisbon in 1755 after a great earthquake in the Atlantic Ocean. Voltaire incorporated the catastrophe into "Candide."

Earthquakes & tsunamis struck Sicily & Cabiria in 1693 & 1783, respectively. In 1908, an earthquake & tsunami destroyed most of the city of Messina, killing almost 100,000 people:

http://fohn.net/biggest-tsunami/biggest-tsunami-4.html

http://geology.com/news/images/us-tsunami-risk.gif

What are the chances Miami will be wiped out within the next...oh let's say...50 years?

This is cracking me up!:lol:

Slim.

Still, you may want to read this:

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-onlin...24206256.shtml
http://www.puertorico-herald.org/iss...ibTsunami.html

Thanks David the links are very informative. I knew about the Messina earthquakes but I didn't know about the tsunamis that took place with them.

Romy

Is the "t" in tsunami silent or enunciated?

Can this booklet help me survive in the event of a sudden Tsunami launched by the Soviet Union?

http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/main.htm

It is not silent. It is sounded. I guess I would call the "tsu" in "tsunami" a cross between a fricative consonant & a sibilant.

You can see the "tsu" in the Japanese hiragana alphabet, middle column, 4th from the top.

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/hiragana_a.jpg

It is pronounced by putting a small patch on the top of the tongue on the palate directly behind the top front teeth, & forcing air through the "tube" formed by the tongue. The sound is similar to that in Yiddish in the word "tsimis" ("commotion" or "to-do").

Man-made tsunamis do not pose major threats to countries in the far field. The seismic forces that generate a tsunami powerful enough to cross an ocean basin are immense: earthquakes created by subduction (an oceanic plate grinding its way slowly under a continental plate, building pressure & ultimately rupturing) generate the energy of approximately 32 billion tons of dynamite -- imagine 2.5 million Hiroshima bombs exploding simultaneously.

After World War II, the American Navy carried out nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Scientists worried that undersea nuclear explosions would trigger tsunamis. Some tests did in fact generate tsunamis -- but the tsunamis were extremely small, on the order of a few centimeters when running up ashore on local islands.

In the column all the way to the right the 5th, 6th and 7th letters down reads: no homo:lol::]

Ok mr David, I have a question for you. I know most Tsunami's like the one in Indonesia are low to the groung when they reach shore. What conditions would it take for a the Tsunami wave to be very tall when it reaches shore?

Hi, Dave. You talking about wave height/amplitude? Tsunamis can surge ashore like a quickly rising tide, but they can also build into a very high wall of water. The shape of the surge is very complex & depends on many, many factors, such as the shape of the sea bed directly offshore (what they call bathymetry), the slope of the continental shelf (shallow or steep), & the shape of the shoreline itself (narrow inlets & bays -- like Hilo in Hawaii -- tend to focus the energy into "small" & "tall").

There were spots in Sumatra where the 2004 tsunami towered to a height of about 70 or 80 feet, because the bathymetry & shoreline funneled the water into a greater height than at most other areas.

Shorelines are mapped with computers in the United States & Japan in order to show potential wave heights at various spots along the coast. You can actually get copies of these maps (usually called inundation or runup maps) from city & county emergency organizations. Various states, including Washington, Oregon, & California, have them compiled.

Here's some info on inundation mapping:
http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/inundation_mapping.html

Peruvian coast is a quake zone. ACtually I think is almost the same "San Andreas" fault that extends to South America.

We just had a big earthquake in august. The sea hit the coast but fortunately not that big. The town (Pisco) near the epicenter did suffer more than Lima, the capital where I live.

I live 3 blocks from the shore but fortunately my neighborhood is over a 80 meters cliff so I think that would protect us from big waves. but that's only the main part of Lima, the rest of the coast could suffer from a strong tsunami, like in 2001 when an earthquake hit Arequipa, south of Peru. There was a tsunami at its coast, reaching several towns, houses.