Impacts of a Tsunami and Why Do These Impacts Vary?

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What are the impacts of a Tsunami and why do these impacts vary? A tsunami is a wave of water, higher than a house but is very disruptive it can smash a full island apart. The Japan Tsunami happened on 11th march 2011 it was a magnitude of 8.9 on the Richter scale. The Richter scale is a numerical value used to measure the power of earthquakes. “It is a logarithmic scale based on the amplitude of waves recorded by a seismograph this means that each whole number increase on the scale corresponds to an absolute increase by a factor of ten. Earthquakes measured at less than about 2.0 on the Richter scale are not very serious, and can barely even be measured, much less felt”. A tsunami is series of events which is coursed under the sea, the tectonic plates rubbing together this is called a conversion as you can see on the picture above, the plates are rubbing together and one is going down and the other is getting pulled down with pressure and friction over years. Then one plate pops up and starts a chain reaction, this causes waves of vibrations which send waves of water, as these waves travel they increase in size getting bigger as they come into land. The impacts of the Tsunami on Japan and the Indian Ocean was horrific, the environment was destroyed. Buildings, boats, roads everything was thrown around, cars were scatted about like toys and some ended up on top of buildings. On 26 December 2004, a massive earthquake of magnitude 9.0 struck the coastal area off northern Sumatra in Indonesia. A number of aftershocks also occurred, some of magnitude 7.1. These earthquakes triggered a Tsunami the like of which had not been seen before. An earthquake is usually considered serious and is felt by most people, once it hits about 5.0. on the Richter scale but the earthquake that hit Japan was a 8.9 and killed 18,000 people and seriously injured 6,100

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