How tall tsunami wave japan

On March 11, , a magnitude 9. It was the largest quake recorded in Japan and the fourth largest in the world since seismic recording began around Within an hour, tremendous tsunami waves inundated much of the eastern Japanese coast, sending 5- to meter walls of water into coastal towns and cities.

In Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, the runup height from the tsunami—the maximum elevation that water moved upland from the shore—reached Near Sendai , flood waters penetrated 10 kilometers 6 miles inland. According to the U. The tsunami affected a kilometer stretch of coast and inundated more than square kilometers of land in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures. Some of the worst devastation was observed at Rikuzentakata Iwate.

The images combine infrared, red, and green wavelengths of light to make false-color images that distinguish between water, vegetation, and urban infrastructure. In the image, most of the areas in purple-blue were flooded or denuded.

The March tsunami killed more than 1, residents about 8 percent of the population of Rikuzentakata and destroyed 80 percent of its residential areas. More than 70, trees in the Takatamatsubara pine forest on the waterfront—planted in the 17th century as a tidewater control—were washed away.

Flood waters sat for weeks on rice paddies and other agricultural land. Satellites captured scenes of the devastation just one day and three days after the event.

Not all undersea quakes generate tsunamis, as some occur so deep in the Earth's crust that they won't cause this push. As the tsunami approaches a shoreline, where the rise of the continental slope means water levels are shallower, the wave begins to narrow and become higher.

Waves have two parts: the peak and the trough. With a tsunami, the trough the low point of a wave is the first part to arrive, causing the sea to recede far from the shore a telltale sign of an impending tsunami. Next, the peak of the wave hits the shore a process called runup. Except for the largest tsunamis, most tsunamis do not result in giant breaking waves like normal surf waves at the beach that curl over as they approach shore. Most tsunamis come in like a very fast-moving high tide.

Live Science. When those quakes force enough land upward, they displace huge ripples of water that grow into tsunamis. A warming climate ups the chance of both types. Melting glaciers redistribute weight across the planet and the related pressure bends the sea floor, increasing volcanic activity. The resulting tsunamis were only feet pdf.

Still, those waves swallowed up a big enough chunk of the coast of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark that they helped turn Britain into an island. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz.