![]() Some of the waves spread out to the south, where wave energy was channeled by a ridge of undersea mountains which extends down to the south of Australia. At the start of the tsunami most of the wave energy traveled either west towards Sri-Lanka and India, or east towards Thailand. ![]() One consequence of this is that the tsunami path is refracted, or bent, by changes in water depth, in much the same way that light is refracted when it passes through a glass lens. The speed of tsunami waves is determined by the depth of water in which the tsunami travels. By the time it reached New Zealand, the tsunami was measured to be as much as half a metre in height at some locations, despite the great distance between here and the earthquake, and the landmass of Australia in between. The tsunami caused huge devastation and in excess of 280,000 deaths in countries bounding the Indian Ocean. This rupturing deformed the seabed, raising a huge volume of water above its normal level, which then spread out as the tsunami. The earthquake ruptured across an area that extends for 1200 kilometres. At magnitude 9.3, the earthquake was larger than first reported, and the second largest ever recorded by scientific instruments. The Indian Ocean tsunami of 26 December 2004 was generated by a very large earthquake off the coast of Sumatra. Modelling performed by William Power using the MOST software developed by Vasily Titov at PMEL. Download the 4.3 megabyte animation here.
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