Tsunami

Giant Tidal Waves & Sea Surges
News Archive 2010

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- tsunami -

DigitalGlobe is making more high-resolution satellite images available to media for free; this set is from the Banda Aceh shore in Indonesia:

Tsunami Satellite Photos

A study of the danger to coastal settlements in Australia from the threat of tsunami is available at:
The Tsunami Papers

Other interesting links for more information about tsunami are listed below:

Tsunami from Asteroid/Comet Impacts

Science of Tsunami
Hazards

Two Decades of Global Tsunamis
1982 - 2002

Simulation of
Impact Tsunami

Washington University
Tsunami page

Pacific Tsunami Museum, Hawaii

Asteroid Tsunami

National Oceanic
& Atmospheric Administation
Tsunami page

A Selection of Books About:

Tsunami

Tidal Waves

Earthquakes

Volcanoes

"Tsunamis in the
Mediterranean Sea
2000 BC-2000AD"
Sergei Leonidovich
Solovev (Editor)
Olga N. Solovieva
Chan N. Go
Khen S. Kim
Nikolay A. Shchetnikov
Sergey L. Soloviev

EU English Edition

"The founder and recognized leader of the Russian scientific school of tsunami researchers Sergey (1930-94) and his collaborators describe in detail the waves generated by earthquakes and accompanying phenomena in a region prone to earthquakes and where the written record allows a study of four millennia. Most of the material is quantitative information, including coordinates of the observation sites, dates, heights of tsunami run-ups, main parameters of the earthquakes, and tide gauge records. That is augmented by the electronic database created in the Tsumani Laboratory, Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics in Novosibirsk. Only geographical names are indexed.

"Tsunami: Monster Waves (American Disasters)"
Mary Dodson Wade
Janet Hamilton

EU English Edition

"Grade 4-7-Tsunamis, although not common, hold a fascination for both shore dwellers and inland inhabitants. The idea of a huge wave coming suddenly with little warning and capable of major devastation is both awesome and horrifying. This pedestrian book capitalizes on the destructive nature of these great waves."

"Tidal Waves Wash Away Cities"
Kate Petty

EU English Edition

"Kids in grades 1-3 will enjoy this set of simple yet entertaining facts about tidal waves: from underwater volcanic action to tidal action and ocean problems, this packs in details about tidal waves and their effects on human habitation with over 30 pages including a glossary and bright photos set against black pages."

"Landslides and Tsunamis"
Barbara Keating, Christopher Waythomas &
Alastair Dawson

EU English Edition

"The study of tsunamis has been shifting away from theoretical modeling of tsunami source, wave propagation and runup toward multidisciplinary investigations, with an emphasis on field studies. This collection of papers highlights the many approaches being utilized to study landslides and tsunamis."

"Caribbean Tsunamis:
A 500-year History from 1498 - 1998"
Karen Fay O`Loughlin, James F. Lander (Editor)

EU English Edition

"In the past 500 years, the Caribbean region has had devastating tsunamis causing incalculable damage. It is an area of relatively high seismicity, and although tsunamis are not the chief natural hazard, they have the potential to produce catastrophic regional disasters.

"Today the necessity for awareness is of paramount importance. Tectonic forces continually build stress - until the inevitable release of strain that may trigger a tsunamigenic earthquake. The lack of a major tsunami in the past 57 years is due to a relative lack of relief of built-up energy, and the potential extent of the stress release grows as time elapses. The long period without relief of seismic stress buildup only increases the ominous threat of a devastating tsunami that could result from a sudden seafloor cataclysm.

The links below are to pages that will give you more information on tsunami - the giant tidal waves that can be caused by undersea earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and, as it has recently been realised, by the impacts of asteroids, comets and meteorites in the oceans. Their incredible destructive power has been responsible for the sweeping away of many coastal towns, villages, and inundating huge landmasses throughout history and prehistory.

Following tsunami there is often very little evidence left for future archæologists to discover, and it is highly probable that much of the evidence of civilisation near coastal areas in prehistoric times has simply been wiped away by these incredible forces of nature.

One recent study has discovered that, according to radiocarbon dating of sediments from the area, a 'giant tsunami' hit the eastern coast of Scotland in 5,800 BC. Stone tools found in the sand off Inverness showed that the waves hit the area without warning following a landslide off Storegga in north-west Norway.

Professor Smith, of the Department of Geography at Coventry University, told BBC News Online:

"It looks as if those people were happily sitting in their camp when this wave from the sea hit the camp. Professor Smith of the department of Geography at Coventry University told BBC News Online. We're talking about two, three or four large waves followed by little ones, that would have been 5-10 metres high. These waves do strike with such force that they are very destructive. It's like being hit by an express train'."

A little further south, on Moel Tryfan in North Wales, the mashed and mangled remains of marine molluscs (sea-shells) have been found in so-called 'Ice-Age drift deposits' supposedly left there when the ice-sheets melted and retreated back towards the North Pole. But the composition of the supposed ice-sheet deposits told another story.

In their book "Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9,500 BB", an academic study of the evidence suggesting that the flood myths of ancient times were based on archaic memories of a 'real global tsunami', or 'deluge', and which challenges the orthodox interpretation of geological history descending from the notions of a Pleistocene Ice Age theorised by Louis Agassiz in the 1820s, authors D. S. Allan and J. B. state:

"Eroded and fragmentary shells occur within the 'drift' deposits on Moel Tryfaen, a mountain in North Wales rising 1,300ft (400m) above sea level. Perplexingly the species represented include not only northern but also temperate and southern forms adapted to very varied habitats. Some required deep and others shallow water, some sandy and others muddy water, and some were peculiar to shingly and others to a bare rocky environment.

In stating that ice could never have brought together so varied a molluscan assemblage as this, it is hardly necessary to add that water could have - in which case the enveloping drift' deposits must have been similarly water-borne."

In fact many of the 'peculiarities' conventionally attributed to an Ice Age simply could not have been created by the supposed advance and retreat of ice-sheets. Yet, if the many and various 'flood-myths' of antiquity, which have been passed down through millennia in the oral traditions of peoples worldwide, are based on true recollections of an 'archaic deluge', a catastrophic mega-tsunami could well have produced ALL of the phenomena now attributed to an Ice Age.

These would include:

• the global distribution of 'erratic boulders' - especially in the latitudes which even the die-hard glaciologists admit were not covered with ice-sheets ...
  
  
• the multi-zone distribution of flora, fauna and marine life-forms in the composition of so-called 'glacial drift' in areas where no ice-sheets are even claimed to have existed ...
  
  
• and also in the pitiful conglomerations of broken and twisted remains of animals, birds, fish, trees and plants, pebbles, dirts and clays which can be found in caves and rock crevices in many areas around the world - not to mention the remains of whales and other sea creatures found on mountaintops - irrespective of theorised Pleistocene ice-sheet coverage ...

NONE of these supposed 'Ice Age Peculiarities' could have been achieved solely by the action of Ice moving horizontally across hilly terrains. The nature of Ice is such that it cannot move uphill, and, as recent scientific surveys have concluded that there were never any huge mountains at the North Pole for ice-sheets to have slid down, ONLY the turbulent waters of mega-tsunami could have brought together such jumbles of life-forms, and forcibly jammed them into the small, tight places we find them today ...

Was there really a Pleistocene Ice Age?

Or are the Deluge Traditions and Flood Myths of antiquity based on a sounder ancient understanding of:

Tsunami

Of course, it is always possible that an ocean-impact-related tsunami abruptly ended the Pleistocene Ice Age.

One of the best resources for understanding the
December 2004 Tsunami tragedy is the
Sydney Morning Herald's
Interactive Tsunami Map

Official Tsunami Monitoring Centres :

International Tsunami Information Centre

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Tsunami Warning Center

National Geophysical Data Center - Tsunami Database

NOAA Tsunami Research Center

FEMA Fact Sheet: Tsunami

West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center
- Latest Tsunami Bulletin -

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center
- Latest Tsunami Bulletin -

Recorded Recent Tsunami

Below are a selection of recent stories from our
News Headlines Archive
Below those are newer 2009 stories in latest date order ...

"The great flood of 1607"

January 30, 2007, BBC Bristol, England:
"Four hundred years ago, in the reign of James I of England, a disaster hit the south west of the country, as a huge surge of water coursed up the Bristol Channel - covering 200 square miles of land with water and killing 2,000 people.

Copyright © 2007 BBC Bristol Blue shading shows flooded areas

Eyewitness accounts of the great flood of 30 January 1607 tell of 'huge and mighty hills of water' advancing at a speed 'faster than a greyhound can run' and only receding 10 days later. The flood reached a speed of 30mph and a height of 25ft.

It swept up to four miles inland in the Bristol area, north Devon, Pembrokeshire, Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and Cardiff - and up to 14 miles inland in low-lying parts of Somerset. But it is still not certain exactly what sparked the disaster which killed so many.

For centuries it was thought high tides and severe storms were to blame, a theory accepted by Dr Kevin Horsburgh from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, who said a massive storm surge, formed by a combination of high tides and hurricane winds, may have been to blame.

Copyright © 2007 BBC Bristol

But a tsunami theory was put forward by experts from Bath and Australia in 2004, supported by evidence of deposits of sand, pebbles and shell at various locations around the Severn Estuary where flood waters swept in, including Hill in South Gloucestershire.

It's believed these deposits may have been brought in from the open ocean." [Full Story]

"Anniversary of 1607 killer wave"

January 30, 2007, BBC News Online, UK:
"A suspected tsunami in the Bristol Channel which killed 2,000 people happened 400 years ago on Tuesday.

Experts believe severe flooding on 30 January 1607 in south west England and south Wales was caused by a tsunami - and not a storm surge or high tides. It is estimated 200 square miles (520 sq km) of land were covered by water.

Simon Hasslett from Bath Spa University said there was currently no tsunami warning system in place. He said the research was important for informing coastal and risk management plans.

The flood of 1607 has been described by experts as the worst natural disaster to hit Britain. Eyewitness accounts of the disaster told of 'huge and mighty hills of water' advancing at a speed 'faster than a greyhound can run'." [Full Story]

Below are a selection of 2010 stories from our
News Headlines Archive

To understand why this News Page is sometimes late here is some information about Fibromyalgia

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The Morien Institute
Research Projects
please send us a book

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Ancient Mysteries
Bookshoppe

for a wide selection of
books that challenge
orthodox views of
prehistory on
our planet :

"Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia"
Stephen Oppenheimer

EU English Edition

"A book that completetly changes the established and conventional view of prehistory by relocating the Lost Eden - the world's 1st civilization - to SouthEast Asia. At the end of the Ice Age, SouthEast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India, which included Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia and Borneo.

The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half sunken continent is the Shunda shelf or Sundaland.

He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from creation stories, myths and sagas and from linguistics and DNA analysis, to argue that this founder civilization was destroyed by a catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in the sea level at the end of the last ice age."

"Red, Earth, White Lies: Native Americans & the Myth of Scientific Fact"
Vine Deloria

EU English Edition

"Leading Native American scholar and author of the best-selling books God Is Red and Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria, Jr., addresses the conflict between mainstream scientific theory about the world and the ancestral worldview of Native Americans. Claiming that science has created a largely fictional scenario for American Indians in prehistoric North America, Deloria offers an alternative view of the continent's history as seen through the eyes and memories of Native Americans.

"The World Almanac and Book of Facts"
Ken Park (Editor)

EU English Edition

extracts from pages
in the book:

"... systems can drive ocean water inland and cause significant flooding. Coastal floods can also be produced by sea waves called tsunamis, sometimes referred to as tidal waves: these waves are produced by earthquakes or volcanic activity

"... of the volcano collapsed to 1,000 ft below sea level, sinking most of the island and killing over 3,000. A tsunami (tidal wave) generated by the collapse killed more than 31,000 people in Java and Sumatra, and eventually reached England."

"Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis"
Ellen J. Prager

EU English Edition

from the back cover:

"The Science Behind the Earth's Most Catastrophic Phenomena. If our planet is a sleeping giant, it slumbers fitfully and awakens in powerful starts. Our familiar landscape bears the scars f hidden forces at work deep beneath it. Furious Earth contains the latest science on these forces and the cataclysmic phenomena they produce - earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis.

Now, hard-won knowledge of these phenomena, gained often in the aftermath of disaster or through dangerous research efforts, is presented here by scientist Ellen Prager with the following experts: Stanley Willaims, Ph.D. Professor of Volcanology, Arizona State University, on volcanoes; Kate Hutton, Ph.D., Seismologist, California State Institute of Technology, on earthquakes; Costas Synolakis, Ph.D., Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Southern California, on tsunamis."

Japan's Mysterious Pyramids: YONAGUNI
Do undersea relics near Okinawa offer proof of a sophisticated civilization during the last ice age?
www.historychannel.com

A Further Selection Of Books About:

Tsunami

Tidal Waves

Earthquakes

Volcanoes