Concept in Definition ABC

In recent years the word tsunami has become a word in common use in our language, despite being a term of Japanese origin.

A tsunami is a climatic phenomenon generally a consequence of earthquakes and characterized by the irruption of a group of large waves and force and that move vertically covering with the Water that move the coasts and even nearby towns with great virulence.

Tragic tsunamis, Indonesia 2004 and Japan 2011

And that popularity of the concept has had a lot to do with the fact that in recent times tsunamis have stalked the planet with great virulence such as Japan in 2011 and Indonesia and Thailand in 2004. In the latter it was a earthquake with epicenter at Ocean Indicate the one that caused the disaster in coast west of Sumatra, in Indonesia. All the coastal towns were washed away by the waters. He even went down in history as the second more serious, 9.3, in the scale of Richter and the fatalities reached almost 250 thousand, a tremendous tragedy natural by the way.

Shaking in the depths of the sea

A tremendous shaking in the depths of the ocean is what triggers this hyper violent agitation of the waters of the sea. Normally it extends to the beaches and generates significant flooding. The level of destruction they generate in their wake is also shocking, not to mention the human and animal victims that they usually take with them.
The waves are so big and high that they cover everything and the force of the water is capable of dragging everything that crosses its path.

During phenomena such as cyclones and hurricanes, giant waves are also usually produced and then we also use the concept to refer to them during these events. In any case, in these cases it is the strong wind that is the trigger and the waves are superficial, it is not that are generated by plate movements at the bottom of the sea, as we already explained, occurs in the tsunami.

The term is also often used seaquake as a synonym for tsunami, although the latter has become more popular.

Photos: iStock - johnnorth / By_Kenny