Tsunami: the great wall of water

SCIENCE

Water is without any doubt the greatest facilitator of life on Earth. Their presence is not ecuanon condition for survival. She is the creator of life, through the rain in the fields and living residence and other species fish in rivers, lakes and oceans. However, its huge size and strength (the product of a much higher density than air) transforms it into a powerful means of energy, sometimes useful as a hydroelectric dam and sometimes highly destructive like a Tsunami.

It is the name adopted for worldwide tsunamis after the tragedy of 2004 in Asia.

It is a complex event involving a group of high-energy waves of variable size that occur when scrolling vertically an extraordinary phenomenon a large body of water. These waves remove an amount of water much higher than the surface waves produced by the wind. It is estimated that 90% of these phenomena are caused by earthquakes.

Its energy depends on its height, its wavelength and the length of the front of the or the waves. The total energy released over a coastal area also depend on the number of peaks that carries the wave train (in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 there were 7 peaks huge, giant and very wide). Often a tsunami that travels great distances, reduce the height of the waves, but always maintained a rate determined by the depth over which the tsunami travels. The height of the tsunami wave in deep water is about 1.0 meters, but the wavelength may reach several hundred kilometers. This is what allows that even when the height in the open ocean is very low, this height abruptly grows with decreasing depth, so that, to decrease the speed of the front of the tsunami, necessarily grow up by transforming kinetic energy into potential energy. In this way a body of water of some meters can bulldoze its way inland.

To date, the most devastating tsusami occurred on December 26, 2004 in the Indian Ocean, with a number of victims directly attributed to the tsunami (tsunami) of approximately 230,000 people. The areas most affected were Indonesia and Thailand. This tsunami was caused tremendous addition to its large magnitude (9.1), the epicenter was only 9 km deep.

To reduce the impact of these phenomena is important to become conscious of future dangers and get down to business: early warning systems, evacuation routes and education of people in cities exposed are our main tools. Let's help convey the message from an event happen again so bad for the human race.

World areas most prone to tsunamis