[by Xiaoming Wang]

On December 26th, 2004 the Indian Ocean experienced the most devastating tsunami in recorded history. The giant tsunami was triggered by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 at 3.4¢XN, 95.7¢XE, off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Over 225,000 people were killed in the surrounding areas including Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Serious damages and death were even reported along the east coast of Africa, as far as 8,000km away from the epicenter.

Using linear Shallow Water Equations (SWE), a preliminary numerical simulation was done based on the bath/topo data and source region information currently in hand. The numerical results showed that the tsunami attacked Sri Lanka at 1:30 after the earthquake, causing a maximum wave height of about 10 meters along east coast of Sri Lanka, which approximately match the news report and field survey. More accurate simulations, including runup and inundation, depend on the detailed bathymetry data together with more precise estimation of source region, which will be done later.

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Right click here to download the 640x480 Quicktime version (about 43 MB)

(by Xiaoming Wang and Tso-Ren Wu)

Right click here to download the animation. (about 100MB)

(by Chris Pelkie at Cornell Theory Center; Xiaoming Wang, Philip L.-F. Liu, and Tso-Ren Wu)

Right click here to download the animation. (about 40MB)

(by Chris Pelkie at Cornell Theory Center; Xiaoming Wang, Philip L.-F. Liu, and Tso-Ren Wu)

2003 Algerian Tsunami

Date: May 21, 2003
Time: 18:44:19 UTC
Magnitude: 6.8
Depth: 10.0 kilometers
Location: 3.71E, 36.90N

[Right click here to download the video (about 10MB, Quicktime version)]

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