Remembering 2004 Tsunami

The tsunamis that hit the shorelines of eleven countries on December 26, 2004, were triggered by a megathrust earthquake. Megathrust earthquakes are a potentially very destructive type caused when a tectonic plate in the Earth's crust slips under another one.

In this case, a 1,000-km section of the India plate moved sideways and downward under the Burma plate just off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to the U.S. government's Earthquake Hazards Program. The resulting earthquake measured a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it the worldwide most powerful tremor in 40 years.

The collision caused the seabed under the Indian Ocean to rise by as much as 10 meters and on some locations even 30 in seconds. The fast and gigantic vertical powerful movement of the ocean floor triggered the tsunamis.A tsunami is a series of very long ocean waves created when a large body of water is displaced. A tsunami can hit shore with devastating impact, as one did on December 26, 2004, when a series of waves pounded the coastlines of Southeast Asia, leveling whole villages and killing around 150,000 people.
Tsunami, pronounced “soo-NAH-mee”, comes from a Japanese word that means "harbor wave." It's often incorrectly called a tidal wave, which is a periodic movement of water produced by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon.

Tsunamis are not connected with the weather or tides. The events and magnitude which triggered the December 2004 tsunami are rare, it is therefore unlikely that something so devastating would happen again. Most of the eleven countries effected by the December 2004 tsunami have now extensive warning systems in place.