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Tsunamis race across the sea at up to 500 miles (805 kilometers) an hour

A tsunami is a series of ocean waves that sends surges of water, sometimes reaching heights of over 100 feet (30.5 meters), onto land. These walls of water can cause widespread destruction when they crash ashore.These awe-inspiring waves are typically caused by large, undersea earthquakes at tectonic plate boundaries. When the ocean floor at a plate boundary rises or falls suddenly it displaces the water above it and launches the rolling waves that will become a tsunami.

Rank: 1. Death: 229,866 Date: 2004 Cause: Indian Ocean tsunami Location: Indian Ocean Rank: 2. Death: 100,000 Date: 1755 Cause: Lisbon earthquake/tsunami/fire Location: Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Ireland, and the United Kingdom (Cornwall) Rank: 3. Death: 100,000 Date: 1908 Cause: Messina earthquake/tsunami Location: Messina, Italy Rank: 4. Death: 36,000 Date: 1883 Cause: Krakatoa eruption Location: Indonesia Rank: 5. Death: 30,000 Date: 1707 Cause: Tokaido/Nankaido Location: Japan Rank: 6. Death: 27,000 Date: 1826 Cause: Location: Japan Rank: 7. Death: 25,674 Date: 1868 Cause: Arica earthquake/tsunami Location: Arica, Chile Rank: 8. Death: 22,070 Date: 1896 Cause: Sanriku Location: Japan Rank: 9. Death: 15,030 Date: 1792 Cause: Mount Unzen eruption in southwest Location: Kyushu Japan Rank: 10. Death: 13,486 Date: 1771 Cause: Ryukyu Trench Location: Japan

A tsunami (Japanese: 津波 [tsɯnami], lit. 'harbor wave';[1] English pronunciation: /suːˈnɑːmi/ soo-NAH-mee) or tidal wave is a series of water waves (called a tsunami wave train[2]) caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, usually an ocean, but can occur in large lakes.

Many early geological, geographical, and oceanographic texts refer to tsunamis as "seismic sea waves."

he huge waves moved quickly across the ocean before hitting land. The waves caused a huge amount of destruction to towns and resorts along the coast. Over 150,000 people were killed as the tsunami waves hit the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and the east coast of Africa. There was very little time to sound alarms and get people away from the coast. The more you know about how the Earth works, the more you can keep yourself and others as safe as possible from natural disasters. We at Windows to the Universe would like to congratulate Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British girl who used her knowledge about how tsunamis works to save 100 people during the event. Tilly learned about tsunamis at school two weeks before the tsunami hit where her family was vacationing in Phuket, Thailand. She saw the water drawing out quickly from the shore and remembered that this can happen before a tsunami wave hits the coast. Thanks to Tilly, her mother, and the hotel staff, everyone was cleared off the beach minutes before the wave arrived. Last modified May 21, 2008 by Lisa Gardiner.

A tsunami is a series of waves generated in an ocean or other body of water by a disturbance such as an earthquake, landslide, volcanic eruption, or meteorite impact. The picture at the left shows how an earthquake can generate a tsunami in the overlying water.

PARIS - THE magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti in January, killing a quarter of a million people, also unleashed a string of tsunamis on the country's western coast, scientists reported on Sunday. Several waves measuring up to 75cm were caused by a combination of earth movement and coastal landslides. They included banks of sediment on the sea bed, accumulated at river deltas, which were displaced by the shock and unleashed the waves as they moved, the study says. Waves were reported west, north and south of the epicentre, which was within a few kilometres of the surface on the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault, on the boundaries of two microplates in the Caribbean. Such 'slide-generated' tsunami are rare, but their risk is underestimated, according to the paper, published online in the journal Nature Geoscience. 'Even modest, predominantly strike-slip earthquakes can cause potentially catastrophic slide-generated tsunami,' it says. A strike-slip earthquake occurs when one side of the fault moves along horizontally and in parallel to the other side of the fault, rather than down or up. Vertical displacement, especially of the seabed, is best known for creating tsunamis. The study was led by a team led by Matthew Hornbach of the University of Texas at Austin. The January 12 quake was in tectonic terms a surprisingly complex affair, according to new research. Two-thirds of the movement was strike-slip, and a third was a thrust, or upward, movement. The quake inflicted huge damage to the capital, Port-au-Prince, injuring 300,000 people and leaving 1.5 million homeless. -- AFP