 Hello. We're H1 Geography students. We're doing a case study on the Indian Ocean Tsunami that occured in 2004. We hope this blog will be of help for you to have a better understanding of the incident. Animation 
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
/ What caused it? WHAT CAUSED IT? The oceanic crust of the Indo-Australian plate is denser and heavier than the continental crust of the Eurasian plate. Therefore, the Indo-Australian plate subducts under the Eurasian plate at the Sunda trench since a very long time ago. The plates move at an average of 60-70 mm per year. Over the years, subduction causes rocks at the subduction zone to bend and energy to be stored in the rocks. When the energy stored in the rock is very high and exceeds the breaking strength of the rock, the rock will break suddenly. This release of energy causes earthquake to occur. Earthquake that occurred during 26 December 2004 caused the Indo-Australian plate to slip 20 meters further below the Eurasian plate. As a result, the Eurasian plate was lifted 5 meters.  This major shift in the plates in turn discharges colossal energy almost equal to the simultaneous explosion of 32,000 A-bombs of Hiroshima size which spread and travelled in the water of the ocean. Consequently, there was a large displacement of water above the shifting plates in the Indian Ocean that began to radiate. In the beginning, the huge waves could not be seen as the water was deep, with a depth of more than 4000 meters. However, the waves were moving at a very fast speed of 500 to 1000 km/h. As the waves neared the coastline, the shallow seafloor caused the waves to slow down but the water collects to form larger, more destructive waves. The waves reaching as high as 24 to 30 meters, travelled inland to cause massive destruction.   8:19 AM ! |
& BURN IT DOWN