Tsunami Giant Tidal Waves & Sea Surges News Archive 2008

Solovev (Editor)

Olga N. Solovieva

Chan N. Go

Khen S. Kim

Nikolay A. Shchetnikov

Sergey L. Soloviev

“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.”

“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.

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.

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.

“A suspected tsunami in the Bristol Channel which killed 2,000 people happened 400 years ago on Tuesday.

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.

“Long before New York City was the Big Apple, or even New Amsterdam, a giant tsunami crashed ashore.

It was 2,300 years ago. The Palisades that frame the Hudson River were whisper-quiet, the sandy beaches of Long Island and New Jersey empty, and Manhattan was still just an unbroken sylvan carpet.

Then came the mammoth wave, roaring into the serenity. No one knows for sure what caused it, but new clues found in the Hudson’s silt suggest an asteroid 100 meters (330 feet) in diameter slammed into the Atlantic Ocean nearby.

‘But the main thing that closes the deal is that we looked in the spherules and found nano-diamonds’, said Dallas Abbott of Columbia University, a co-author on the work. ‘These have only been found in impact ejecta or in meteorites.’

“A full-sized forerunner to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit the region between 500 and 700 years ago, a new study suggests.

Until now there has been no historical record of a predecessor to the Indian Ocean tsunami and the associated magnitude 9.2 associated earthquake.

“The Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 was not the first of its size to hit the region, according to new research. Two international collaborations have sampled the sediments in Thailand and Sumatra to examine tsunami history.

At both sites, there was evidence of sediment laid down by a large tsunami between 600 and 700 years ago, pre-dating written and oral records.

The findings, reported in Nature, could be used to put statistical weight behind estimates of future tsunami.

The surge of a tsunami brings with it a great deal of sediment that rushes inland; the bigger the tsunami, the deeper and further inland the layer of sediment it leaves behind.

In locations where those deposits aren’t disturbed by wind or running water, they can be used as a historical record of these powerful events after more layers are added.

“A geologist has found evidence that a vast rock slide may have set off a tsunami that buried a prehistoric village on Lake Mondsee in the Austrian Alps.

According to a report in Spiegel Online [see article below. Ed.], the theory that a severe rockslide in the Alps destroyed a prehistoric village, has been put forward by Alexander Binsteiner, a geologist and flint stone expert.

“What happened to the prehistoric village on Lake Mondsee in the Austrian Alps? One geologist has found evidence that a vast rock slide may have set off a tsunami that buried the lakeside settlement.

He’s hoping to find funding — and mummies. Could it be that a severe rockslide in the Alps destroyed a prehistoric village?

Alexander Binsteiner, a geologist and flint stone expert, has proposed the thesis. He believes that the accident affected lake dwellers living on the eastern tip of Mondsee Lake, near present-day Salzburg. Twenty to 50 wooden huts, coated with mud or cow dung, stood there on stilts along the lakefront. The women wore dresses made of flax, decorated with shells and snails, and the men wore bast fiber ponchos and sandals.

The people of the Mondsee Lake settlement were apparently relatively advanced within this cultural group. They had metallurgical skills, which were rare in Europe. They cleverly searched the mountains for copper deposits, melted the crude ore in clay ovens and made refined, shimmering red weapons out of the metal.

At approximately 3200 B.C., says Binsteiner, the master blacksmiths were struck by a ‘devastating natural disaster’. The event began with a muffled cracking noise. Then a cliff 150 meters (492-foot) tall and five kilometers (3.1 miles) long broke off on the southern shore of Mondsee Lake and plunged into the water.

The geological traces of the disaster were discovered by accident, and only recently. ‘A heavy storm knocked down hundreds of trees here recently’, explains Binsteiner. The forest floor was thus exposed for all to see. The root systems of the trees jut high in to the air and, more importantly, it is now apparent that the site is littered with large boulders, extending all the way down to the water’s edge.

“The BBC and the National Geographic Channel are making a documentary based on the controversial theories of a Wollongong academic, who claims that meteorites hit the earth every 1000 years.

The documentary, Ancient Mega-Tsunamis, is based on the theories of University of Wollongong associate professor Ted Bryant and the Holocene Impact Working Group, a collective of scientists from the United States, Russia, France, Ireland and Australia.

“A total of 499 Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Hindu priests and a Buddha statue in the ‘Calming the Ocean’ posture will take part in a ritual next Tuesday to keep the province’s coastline safe from storm surges.

Provincial governor Anuwat Maytheewibulwut said the ‘Stop the wind, stop the water’ ceremony will be held at the provincial hall in Muang district.

The ancient Buddha statue will be borrowed from Wat Phra Samut Chedi, and its presence will be the highlight of the ceremony.

The statue is in a standing position with forearms raised, palms forward.

“At the bottom of the sea, some 300 meters west of the Atlit fortress, lies one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Mediterranean basin. About 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered a complex of ancient buildings and ancient graves with dozens of skeletons at the underwater site of Atlit-Yam.

The team of marine archaeologists that excavated the site, headed by Dr. Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to the consclusion that an ancient settlement once existed there, but sank beneath the surface of the sea some 8,000 years ago.

The finds at the site, including goat and pig bones and wheat seeds, indicate that it was a well-established community whose residents supported themselves by agriculture, hunting, fishing and animal husbandry.

Over the past few months, a major argument has erupted among researchers over what caused the village and the surrounding region to flood.

A few months ago, a team of geologists from Pisa, Italy published a paper that offers a dramatic theory about how the ancient settlement met its end. They claim that the settlement was submerged all at once by a tsunami in the Mediterranean, causing the death of dozens of its inhabitants. This theory attributes the tsunami to something that happened thousands of kilometers away.

About 8,300 years ago, there was a mighty volcanic explosion at Mt. Etna in Sicily. The Italian geologists examined the area of the volcano, which is still active today, and found that the explosion caused a tremendous avalanche of rocks to go tumbling into the sea.

“‘Azhii peralai: from the deep … large waves.’. This is the expression for ‘tsunami’ in Tamil, the oldest language in southern India.

In other words, the catastrophic Indian Ocean event in December 2004 that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries – including 15,000 in India – was hardly a one freak occurrence, he says, and people could have been much better prepared for it.

The proof lies in the layers below the Earth’s surface, says Mr. Ruffman, honorary research associate in Dalhousie’s Department of Earth Sciences. What better way to predict the threat of future tsunamis than studying patterns from the past?

Coastal sediments provide a potent geological record of recent and ancient tsunamis, he says, adding that the size of the sand particles can provide clues about the actual height of the water column.

“‘The sea was driven back, and its waters flowed away to such an extent that the deep sea bed was laid bare and many kinds of sea creatures could be seen’, wrote Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus, awed at a tsunami that struck the then-thriving port of Alexandria in 365 AD.

Ancient documents show the great waves of July 21, 365 AD claimed lives from Greece, Sicily and Alexandria in Egypt to modern-day Dubrovnik in the Adriatic. Swamped by sea water, rich Nile delta farmland was abandoned and hilltop towns became ghost-like, inhabited only by hermits.

The tsunami was generated by a massive quake that occurred under the western tip of the Greek island of Crete, experts believe.

Until now, the main thinking has been that this quake — as in the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004 — occurred in a so-called subduction zone. A subduction zone is where two of the Earth’s plates meet. One plate rides over another plate which is gliding downward at an angle into the planet’s mantle.

“Archaeologists have rebuffed a theory by geological researchers that Australia has been subject to prehistoric mega-tsunamis up to 20 m in height over the past 10,000 years.

This theory was based on findings of shell and coral deposits in a 2,500 km stretch of the WA (Western Australia) coast, supposedly caused due to tsunami surges up to 20m in height.

“SUPPOSED evidence Australia has been subject to prehistoric tsunamis up to 20m in height over the past 10,000 years could just be the result of Aboriginal occupation, a major conference is set to hear tomorrow.

In 2003 Australian geological researchers suggested prehistoric tsunamis over the past 10,000 years were much larger than those recorded since European settlement, including findings of surges up to 20m in height affecting a 2500km stretch of the WA coast.

‘Our field work would suggest that the shell and coral deposits found high on headlands in WA or further inland are evidence of Aboriginal occupation of the area, and not deposits of mega-tsunamis or other major inundations’, ANU researcher Dr Tony Barham said.