Tsunamis: A Primer

Jeremy Bernstein

NOAA

Energy propagation pattern of the March 11, 2011 tsunami

I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair
of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped—not so the mass of water in the channel which it had
put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then
suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large
solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course
along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on
horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles per hour,
preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its
height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the
channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and
beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation.

—John Scott Russell, 1834

For those who saw video footage of it, the tsunami that hit Japan’s north coast on Friday and then
moved inland with overpowering force was a terrifying sight. Three days later, this wall of water,
generated by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake offshore, is blamed for thousands of deaths and untold
destruction in Japan. I am neither an oceanographer nor a hydrodynamicist, but I have learned a
little about the physics of tsunamis that I would like to share. More learned readers will no doubt
have corrections.

The word tsunami is a compound. Tsu in Japanese means harbor and nami means wave. I do not
know why this name was chosen. At one time they were called “tidal waves” but they have
nothing to do with tides. Even earlier they were known as “orphan waves” since their connection
to earthquakes occurring thousands of miles away was unsuspected. In fact, earthquakes are not
the only way to produce such waves; they can also be caused by underwater volcanic eruptions
and even nuclear explosions—anything that can lift a large mass of water. But as in the case of
Japan, quakes have historically caused some of the largest tsunamis. In 1946, a 7.4 magnitude
earthquake on a fault that runs along the North American Pacific coast produced a 100-foot
tsunami that struck the Aleutian Islands, about 90 miles from the epicenter, with such
catastrophic force that it was impossible to transmit warnings to Hawaii, whose shorelines were
subsequently hit and severely damaged.

What happens is that the ocean floor is pushed up by the tectonic process that produces the
quake. The water above it is incompressible so it gets pushed up bodily. Then it falls back down
causing large displacements of water. This process provides the energy that creates the waves,
which initially move out in concentric circles from the source. (Not every earthquake produces
tsunamis. It depends on how the tectonic plates have been moved.)

A mini-example can be seen if you drop a stone into a still pond. As the tsunami waves expand,
their circularity become less evident. By the time the Japanese tsunami waves arrived at our west
coast they were for all intents and purposes straight lines. This happens near the shore because
the portions of the wave closest to the shore move slower and the parts father away catch up.
Imagine soldiers marching in a semicircular formation with the front one moving more slowly.
The waves that are produced have very long wave lengths—a hundred miles or more and travel
at speeds of up to 500 miles per hour. In the Japanese case, the wave was probably formed about
80 miles offshore and reached land within an hour.

Tsunamis are nothing like the wind generated waves near a beach, which have relatively short
wave lengths and arrive on the beach one after the other in rapid succession. One must also be
clear that it is not the original water displaced by the quake that travels. The beaches of Hawaii
and California are not inundated with the water that was pushed up off the coast of Japan. One
ocean disturbance generates another and it is these disturbances that travel.

A tsunami wave on the high seas is largely imperceptible. The wave crests are very far apart and
are not very high. The crests can be as much as 300 miles from each other. Regarding how fast
they move, the waves also have an interesting property. The speed is proportional to the square
root of the ocean depth. The wave length is much longer than the ocean depth so these waves are
sometimes referred to as “shallow water waves.” In mid-ocean these waves can move 500 miles
per hour or even faster; close to landfall, they are more likely to be traveling a few miles per hour
—still terrifying if you are in front of one, but slow enough that people with proper warning and
escape routes can ideally be evacuated.

Even more remarkable, tsunami waves are apparently examples of what physicists call a
“soliton,” a phenomenon that was first described by John Scott Russell in 1834. They do not
dissipate like sound waves. You do not hear conversations from Tokyo on Santa Monica beaches.
They lose very little energy as they travel. When they get to the shallow water near shore they
slow down, but since the energy remains the same the wave increases in height to compensate for
the diminishing speed. These gargantuan waves are what cause the damage. As is well-known
they can arrive in a series. The first one to arrive may not be the most dangerous. There have
been many larger aftershocks since the first quake and such an aftershock could also generate a
tsunami. There is, by the way, a similar fault line off the coast of California.

The reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were damaged by the quake. The diesel
engine electric generators that were being used to provide coolant for the reactors were disabled
by the tsunami water. As I write this, the fate of these reactors is still unclear.

March 14, 2011 6:15 p.m.

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