What distinguishes tsunamis from other waves?
A wind-generated ocean surface wave is not the same as a tsunami. The passage of a tsunami involves the movement of water from the surface to the seafloor, unlike wind-generated waves in deep water, which only induce water movement near the surface. Contrary to wind-generated waves, this has the interesting effect of causing a tsunami’s pace to depend on the depth of the ocean, with quicker speeds in deeper water. As a result, a tsunami slows down as it gets closer to land and enters progressively shallow water, and the space between each wave crest is smaller. The energy is transferred to raise the wave height because the wave’s overall energy remains constant. The term for this is wave shoaling.
The first wave in a series of waves that make up a tsunami may not always have the largest amplitude. Even the strongest tsunami in the open ocean are often only tens of centimeters or less in height when they are far from the tsunami’s initial genesis zone. There are occasions when higher oceanic wave heights are seen quite near the tsunami-producing zone. The shoaling effect, in any case, can significantly raise the height of open ocean waves as they approach the shoreline, with some tsunamis reaching an onshore height of more than ten meters above sea level. Extreme flooding is more likely to happen close to the source of the tsunami and in areas where the coastline is particularly conducive to the tsunami’s amplifying effects.
What is a Tsunami?
Tsunami is a Japanese word that sounds like “soo-nah-me,” with “tsu” standing for harbor and “nami” for wave. Tsunamis are waves brought on by the abrupt movement of the ocean’s surface as a result of earthquakes, seafloor landslides, landfalls into the water, powerful volcanic eruptions, or meteorite impacts.
The word “tidal wave,” which was once used to describe tsunami, is now universally avoided because the formation of the tsunami has nothing to do with tides (which are driven by the gravity of the Earth, Moon, and Sun). There are times when a tsunami will also include one or more choppy breaking waves, despite the fact that sometimes they will appear at the coast as a swiftly rising or lowering tide.
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