GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -When a great earthquake ruptures, the faulting can cause vertical slip that is large enough to disturb the overlying ocean, thus generating a tsunami that will travel outwards in all directions.

Detailed explanation-2: -A continental plate is dragged down and bent by an oceanic plate. The continental plate cannot bend any more and snaps back, pushing the seawater up. The seawater spreads in all directions as a tsunami and reaches land, sometimes hours later.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Tohoku earthquake caused a tsunami. A tsunami-Japanese for “harbor wave”-is a series of powerful waves caused by the displacement of a large body of water.

Detailed explanation-4: -A tsunami is a very large coastal wave that is most often the result of an underwater earthquake. The word tsunami comes from the Japanese meaning a ‘harbour wave’. Most large tsunamis occur at convergent plate boundaries where two tectonic plates are crashing into each other.

Detailed explanation-5: -The underwater explosion of the volcano flash boiled the ocean, creating a 300-ft deep and 5-mile wide crater in the ocean surface. You read that right: Five miles wide. The tsunami from this explosion sped away from the volcano towards the islands of Tonga moving at 250 miles per hour.