What are the causes behind the tsunamis?

Question

I don't think it has to do with God or any of those, I think it's mother's natures force for some reason. You can list the cause of tsunamis.

Answer 1

Pop culture is the cause - really strange. These waves are called "tidal waves". Who the h**l decided it's tsunami??? Look it up. let japan call them what they want.

Stop being a sheep...

Answer 2

Everything has to do with God in this Universe, and the causes of Tsunami are the Earthquakes under the ocean that create Giant and Destructing waves. Through Tsunami, God wanna show it's people that Hes there and show His Wrath, especially to the people who have forgotten him.

Answer 3

In short, underwater earthquakes.

What happens when there is an earthquake, is that the two tectonic "plates" (Usually these are at the coast between ocean and land, think California) move and one ends up just slightly higher than the other.

When this happens underwater, one plate sinks a tiny bit during the quake, (but it is a HUGE amount of area overall since the plates are so huge)  all the water sinks a bit nearby to fill in that lowered area.  THis is why you will hear stories of people telling how "The sea disapeared right before the Tsunami hit".  Then, since the water over the lowered plate has sunk down, the nearby water sort of Crashes over it since it is higher.  You have a lowering of a MAJOR portion of the oceanic crust, with a second step of the higher plate's water coming crashing in to fill it at such a fast speed , when this racing water hits the shallow shoreline, BAM the amount of water goes UP into the air because the water is so shallow here, there is no where else to go but up, and while it's still racing forward it comes onto the land like an out-of-control train! (times a million)

Answer 4

A tsunami (pronounced /tsuːˈnɑːmi/) is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, some volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, underwater earthquakes, large asteroid impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami. The effects of a tsunami can be devastating due to the immense volumes of water and energy involved. Since meteorites are small, they will not generate a tsunami.

The Greek historian Thucydides was the first to relate tsunamis to submarine quakes,[1] [2] but understanding of the nature of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and is the subject of ongoing research.

Many early geological, geographic, oceanographic etc; texts refer to "Seismic sea waves" - these are now referred to as "tsunami."

Some meteorological storm conditions - deep depressions causing cyclones, hurricanes; can generate a storm surge which can be several metres above normal tide levels. This is due to the low atmospheric pressure within the centre of the depression. As these storm surges come ashore the surge can resemble a tsunami, inundating vast areas of land. These are not tsunami. Such a storm surge inundated Burma or, Myanmar in May 2008.

A tsunami can be generated when converging or destructive plate boundaries abruptly move and vertically displace the overlying water. It is very unlikely that they can form at divergent (constructive) or conservative plate boundaries. This is because constructive or conservative boundaries do not generally disturb the vertical displacement of the water column. Subduction zone related earthquakes generate the majority of all tsunamis.

On 1st April, 1946 a Magnitude 7.8 (Richter Scale) earthquake occurred near the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawai'i with a 14 m high surge. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.

Examples of tsunami being generated at locations away from convergent boundaries include - Storegga during the Neolithic era, Grand Banks 1929, Papua New Guinea 1998 (Tappin, 2001). In the case of the Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis an earthquake caused sediments to become unstable and subsequently fail. These slumped and as they flowed down slope a tsunami was generated. These tsunami did not travel transoceanic distances.

It is not known what caused the Storegga sediments to fail. It may have been due to overloading of the sediments causing them to become unstable and they then failed solely as a result of being overloaded. It is also possible that an earthquake caused the sediments to become unstable and then fail. Another theory is that a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.,) caused the slump.

The "Great Chilean earthquake" (19:11 hrs UTC) 22nd May 1960 (9.5 Mw), the 27th March 1964 "Good Friday earthquake" Alaska 1964 (9.2 Mw), and the "Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake" (00:58:53 UTC) 26th December 2004 (9.2 Mw), are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated a tsunami that was able to cross oceans. Smaller (4.2 Mw) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunami that can devastate nearby coasts within 15 minutes or less.

In the 1950s it was hypothesised that larger tsunamis than had previously been believed possible may be caused by landslides, explosive volcanic action e.g., Santorini, Krakatau, and impact events when they contact water. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water into which the debris falls at a rate faster than the ocean water can absorb it. They have been named by the media as "mega-tsunami."

Tsunami caused by these mechanisms, unlike the trans-oceanic tsunami caused by some earthquakes, may dissipate quickly and rarely affect coastlines distant from the source due to the small area of sea affected. These events can give rise to much larger local shock waves (solitons), such as the landslide at the head of Lituya Bay 1958, which produced a wave with an initial surge estimated at 524m. However, an extremely large gravitational landslide might generate a so called "mega-tsunami" that may have the ability to travel trans-oceanic distances. This though is strongly debated and there is no actual geological evidence to support this hypothesis.

There is often no advance warning of an approaching tsunami. However, since earthquakes are often a cause of tsunami, any earthquake occurring near a body of water may generate a tsunami if it occurs at shallow depth, is of moderate or high magnitude, and the water volume and depth is sufficient. In Japan moderate - 4.2 Magnitude earthquakes can generate tsunami which can inundate the area within 15 minutes.

If the first part of a tsunami to reach land is a trough (draw back) rather than a crest of the wave, the water along the shoreline may recede dramatically, exposing areas that are normally always submerged. This can serve as an advance warning of the approaching tsunami which will rush in faster than it is possible to run. If a person is in a coastal area where the sea suddenly draws back (many survivors report an accompanying sucking sound), their only real chance of survival is to run for high ground or seek the high floors of high rise buildings.

In the 2004 tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean drawback was not reported on the African coast or any other western coasts it inundated, when the tsunami approached from the east. This was because of the nature of the wave - it moved downwards on the eastern side of the fault line and upwards on the western side. It was the western pulse that inundated coastal areas of Africa and other western areas.

80% of all tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean, but are possible wherever large bodies of water are found, including inland lakes. They may be caused by landslides, volcanic explosions, bolides and seismic activity.

Indian Ocean Tsunami According to an article in "Geographical" magazine (April 2008), the Indian Ocean tsunami of 26th December 2004 was not the worst that the region could expect. Professor Costas Synolakis of the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California co-authored a paper in "Geophysical Journal International" which suggests that a future tsunami in the Indian Ocean basin could affect locations such as Madagascar, Singapore, Somalia, Western Australia and many others. The Boxing Day tsunami killed over 300,000 people with many bodies either being lost to the sea or unidentified. Some unofficial estimates have claimed that approximately 1 million people may have died directly or indirectly solely as a result of the tsunami.

Answer 5

they are caused by a sudden drop or shift in the sea/ocean floor.

Answer 6

an underwater earthquake caused by two plates colliding and slipping over each other. the difference between a stunami and tidal wave is that a tsunami is unrelenting  waves and a tidal wave is one massive wave.

hope this helped.

Answer 7

underground earthquakes raise the ocean floor which causes instability, think of it as waving your arms up and down in a bathtub, it creates waves, same concept, here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami

Answer 8

The most common cause is an undersea earthquake.

Tsunamis can also be caused by very large avalanches into the ocean, volcanic eruptions, by a large meteorite impact in the ocean.

What causes a tsunami?... A tsunami is a large ocean wave that is caused by sudden motion on the ocean floor. This sudden motion could be an earthquake, a powerful volcanic eruption, or an underwater landslide. The impact of a large meteorite could also cause a tsunami. Tsunamis travel across the open ocean at great speeds and build into large deadly waves in the shallow water of a shoreline.

Subduction Zones are Potential Tsunami Locations

Most tsunamis are caused by earthquakes generated in a subduction zone, an area where an oceanic plate is being forced down into the mantle by plate tectonic forces. The friction between the subducting plate and the overriding plate is enormous. This friction prevents a slow and steady rate of subduction and instead the two plates become "stuck".

As the stuck plate continues to descend into the mantle the motion causes a slow distortion of the overriding plage. The result is an accumulation of energy very similar to the energy stored in a compressed spring. Energy can accumulate in the overriding plate over a long period of time - decades or even centuries.

Energy accumulates in the overriding plate until it exceeds the frictional forces between the two stuck plates. When this happens, the overriding plate snaps back into an unrestrained position.

This sudden motion is the cause of the tsunami - because it gives an enormous shove to the overlying water. At the same time, inland areas of the overriding plate are suddenly lowered.

The moving wave begins travelling out from where the earthquake has occurred. Some of the water travels out and across the ocean basin, and, at the same time, water rushes landward to flood the recently lowered shoreline.

Tsunamis travel swiftly across the open ocean. ....a tsunami produced by an earthquake along the coast of Chile in 1960 traveled across the Pacific Ocean, reaching Hawaii in about 15 hours and Japan in less than 24 hours.

Many people have the mistaken belief that tsunamis are single waves. They are not. Instead tsunamis are "wave trains" consisting of multiple waves. The chart below is a tidal gauge record from Onagawa, Japan beginning at the time of the 1960 Chile earthquake. Time is plotted along the horizontal axis and water level is plotted on the vertical axis. Note the normal rise and fall of the ocean surface, caused by tides, during the early part of this record. Then recorded are a few waves a little larger than normal followed by several much larger waves. In many tsunami events the shoreline is pounded by repeated large waves.

Answer 9

It doesn't have anything to do with God or anything. The causes of tsunamis are an underwater earthquake. It depends on how bad it is. If it was small of course there would still would be a tsunami but it would be smaller (700 - 800 feet high) Big earthquakes underwater would make big tsunamis that are really high (1,100 feet +)

Answer 10

full moon...

high tide..

Answer 11

the cause of tsunamis are that there are plates that make up the earth which will suddenly move witch will cause an earth quake and the big wave is created