Tsunamis are generated by displacement or motion of large volumes of water. While there are several documented cases of tsunami generation by volcanic eruptions and landslides, most observed tsunamis are attributed to earthquakes. Kinematic models of tsunami generation by earthquakes — where specified fault size and slip determine seafloor and sea-surface vertical motion — quantitatively explai...

Basic tsunami physics of propagation and run-up is discussed for the simple geometry of a channel. Modifications of a numerical technique are suggested for the long-distance propagation and for the nonlinear processes in tsunami waves. The principal modification is application of the higher order of approximations for the first derivative in space. Presently, tsunami calculations employ the hig...

Ocean tsunami wavelengths are sufficiently long to produce atmospheric internal gravity waves that propagate to the ionosphere, creating disturbances in ionospheric electron density that travel with the ocean waves below. These traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) can be observed using measurements of integrated ionospheric electron density (also known as total electron content, or TEC) be...

The Indonesian tsunami in December 2004 awakened the world to the need to better understand and predict tsunami wave behavior using simulations. In order to understand such an immense amount of data, a visual approach was desired. This paper describes a visualizer for tsunami wave simulations. The Tsunami Visualization and Animation Tool (TVAT) works with multiresolution wave height and bathyme...

S U M M A R Y We present a re-evaluation of the seismological properties of the Aleutian ‘tsunami earthquake’ of 1946 April 1, characterized by a deceptively low conventional magnitude (7.4) in view of its catastrophic tsunami, both in the near and far fields. Relocation of 40 aftershocks show that the fault zone extends a minimum of 181 km along the Aleutian trench, in a geometry requiring a b...

The 2004 Sumatra tsunami propagated throughout the World Ocean and was clearly recorded by tide gauges on the Atlantic coast of South America. A total of 17 tsunami records were found and subsequently examined for this region. Tsunami wave heights and arrival times are generally consistent with numerical modeling results. Maximum wave heights of more than 1.2 m were observed on the coasts of Ur...

Historical tsunami events have impacted the Istanbul coasts along the Sea of Marmara. Offshore seismic sources may trigger these tsunamis directly or through coseismic underwater failure. The 1999 zmit Bay tsunami led to more comprehensive analyses of these events which are generally caused by underwater failures close to the target coastline. Waves so generated can arrive at nearby coastlines ...

Tsunamis propagate at the surface of the deep ocean horizontal phase speeds of approximately 200 m/s, which is about two-thirds of the lower atmospheric sound speed. They have large horizontal wavelengths that are typically of a few hundred kilometers, and they remain coherent over large propagation distances. They also have large horizontal extents (sometimes a few thousand kilometers) paralle...

In the wake of the very large Indian Ocean tsunami on 26 December 2004, and several subsequent events in the Pacific Ocean, scientific and disaster mitigation studies have been initiated to better understand and observe tsunami propagation. This paper describes observations made on nearshore longperiod seismometers of a little known and, to our knowledge, recently discovered phenomenon associat...