RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES VOL. 8, ES4004, doi:10.2205/2006ES000214, 2006


Introduction

2006ES000214-fig01
Figure 1
[2]  At 00:59 UTC on December 26, 2004, a M = 9.0 megathrust earthquake occurred along 1000 km of the subduction zone west of Sumatra and Thailand in the Indian Ocean (Figure 1). The tsunami generated by this massive earthquake was responsible for over 200,000 deaths, millions of homeless people, and untold property and infrastructure damage along the exposed coasts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives. Somalia, Kenya and other countries on the east coast of Africa were also significantly impacted by the waves. The tsunami waves propagated to the far corners of the global ocean and were recorded with amplitudes ranging from a few centimeters to several meters on the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the east and west coasts of North and South America, and the Pacific Islands [Titov et al., 2005].

[3]  Although previous attempts have had some success detecting relatively weak tsunamis in satellite altimeter data [cf. Okal et al., 1999], the Sumatra event was the first major tsunami detected by satellite altimetry. Moreover, the event was observed by four satellite systems (TOPEX/POSEIDON, Jason, Envisat and Geosat) rather than just a single system. The Jason-satellite, operated jointly by NASA and the French space agency (CNES), was strategically placed during cycle 109, track 129 [Gower, 5], providing accurate measurement of the tsunami wave height in the Indian Ocean. Here, we use sea surface altimetry data provided by the Jason-1 track to examine the dispersive characteristics of the open ocean tsunami waves as they propagated from the source area westward toward India and Sri Lanka.


RJES

Citation: Kulikov, E. (2006), Dispersion of the Sumatra Tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean detected by satellite altimetry, Russ. J. Earth Sci., 8, ES4004, doi:10.2205/2006ES000214.

Copyright 2006 by the Russian Journal of Earth Sciences

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