Its center (red star) was near the boundary between the India Plate and the Burma Plate. The earthquake that spawned the recent Indian Ocean tsunami occurred off the coast of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia. The recent Indian Ocean tsunami, for instance, was triggered by a powerful quake at the bottom of the ocean near the west coast of an island in Indonesia called Sumatra. Tsunami is a Japanese word meaning “harbor wave.” Most tsunamis form after a massive underwater earthquake. How does it go around breakwaters? How does it break? How does it run up on land and around structures?” “What I think is the hard part,” he says, “is figuring out what happens when the wave gets to shore.

He’s a coastal engineer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“We’re pretty good at knowing where is going to go and how long it would take to get there,” says Robert Dalrymple. In a few places, such as Oregon State University in Corvallis, researchers even use wave machines that produce mini-tsunamis in the laboratory. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The recent Indian Ocean tsunami not only killed people and damaged property but also caused environmental damage to marine ecosystems. Others look at how such waves move and what happens when they hit land. Some projects focus on predicting tsunamis. Instead, tsunami researchers rely on computers to try to figure out where waves might start and how they might behave.

So, there’s not a lot of data to work with. And there’s no way to know exactly when or where one will hit next. There’s no way to stop them from forming. They’re caused by underwater earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or landslides. Tsunamis are a natural product of Earth’s geology.

Scientists are now trying to find ways to do a better job of detecting tsunamis and providing timely warnings of danger.

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