Geography assessment
What is a Tsunami?
Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions under the sea. When tsunamis are in the deep parts of the ocean tsunami their height does not change very much. But as the waves travels inland, they keep increasing in height as the depth of the ocean decreases. The speed of the tsunami depends on the ocean depth rather than the distance from the source of the wave. Tsunami waves may travel as fast as jet planes over deep waters, only slowing down when reaching shallow waters.
When and where did the Japanese Tsunami occur?
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake (originally reported as 8.9) on Friday, March 11, 2011 happened near the east coast of Honshu, Japan. The epicenter of the quake was reported to be 129 kilometers (80 miles) off the east coast of the Oshika Peninsula, TÅhoku near Sendai.
First town hit by Earthquake
First town hit by Earthquake
Focus of the Earthquake
Focus of the Earthquake
It was reported that the earthquake created tsunami waves of up to 10 meters (33 ft.) that struck Japan, with smaller waves in many other countries, with a significant surge and damage as far away as Chile, on the opposite side of the world from Japan. In Japan, the waves are reported to have traveled up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) inland.
What caused the Japanese Tsunami?
To fully understand how the Tsunami occurred you must first look at destructive plate margins, these are where continental crust and oceanic crust converge. When the 2 crusts converge the oceanic crust being made of weaker and younger rock than that of the continental crust is then subducted into a place called the subduction zone where the oceanic crust goes down into the mantle at the speed same speed as the growth of your fingernail. Now sometimes the jagged edges of the 2 crusts can lock together and allow tension to build up for several hundred years until either the oceanic crust snaps under the tremense pressure or the oceanic...