The term "tsunami" is a borrowing from the Japanese tsunami 津波, meaning "harbour wave." For the plural, one can … See more

While Japan may have the longest recorded history of tsunamis, the sheer destruction caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami event mark it as the most devastating of its kind in modern times, killin… See more

The principal generation mechanism of a tsunami is the displacement of a substantial volume of water or perturbation of the sea. This displacement of water is usually caused by earthquakes, but can also be attributed t… See more

Tsunamis are caused by earthquakes, landslides, volcanic explosions, glacier calvings, and bolides. They cause damage by two mechanisms: the smashing force of a wall of water travelling at high speed, and the destruc… See more

All waves have a positive and negative peak; that is, a ridge and a trough. In the case of a propagating wave like a tsunami, either may be the first to arrive. If the first part to arrive at the shore is the ridge, a massive breaking w… See more

As with earthquakes, several attempts have been made to set up scales of tsunami intensity or magnitude to allow comparison between different events.
The first scales used routinely to measure the intensit… See more