Word: oceaneering
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Though the epicenter of last week's disaster was in the Indian Ocean, the devastating toll was felt worldwide. European tourists apparently numbering in the thousands were drowned alongside the tens of thousands of victims who lived on the coasts of East Asia, South Asia and Africa. A world divided by ethnic and religious disputes suddenly faced its common humanity--and common mortality--in a disaster of shocking geographic reach. At least for the moment, the world has united to aid millions of vulnerable people trying to piece their lives back together in the wake of the devastation...
Geologists describe the tectonics--the almost imperceptibly slow movement of massive plates--of the southern Indian Ocean as complex because a number of plates converge there. The floor of the Indian Ocean--the Indian plate--is moving north at around 2.5 in. per year, about twice the rate that your fingernails grow. As it moves, it is forced under the Burma plate to its east. Eighteen miles below the surface of the ocean, stresses that had been gradually accumulating forced the Burma plate to snap upward. That was a huge geological event, eventually measured at 9.0 on the Richter scale...
...movement of the plates sent shock waves through the water. Although tsunamis are often (incorrectly) called tidal waves, they have nothing to do with tides. They are, rather, very long waves--sometimes with hundreds of miles between their crests--that race along the ocean at speeds that can reach almost 500 miles an hour. In deep, open water, you would never notice even the most devastating tsunamis, which are often no more than a few inches high there. But when the water's depth decreases, the wavelength shortens and the height of the wave increases. Then it crashes onto shore...
...earthquake is located outside the Pacific. No destructive tsunami threat exists based on historical earthquake and tsunami data." Fifty minutes later, a further bulletin upgraded the quake to 8.5 and added the sentence "There is the possibility of a tsunami near the epicenter." Weinstein stresses that even for Pacific Ocean tsunamis, it's not the job of the PTWC to tell other nations what to do. "They're supposed to have their own tsunami experts," he says, "people who make the decisions based on the information we provide." Australian scientists work with the same protocols. "We knew half an hour...
...Discussion of preventative action for the future has come to focus on implementing a tsunami early warning system in the Indian Ocean of the type that exists in the Pacific. Tens of thousands of lives might have been spared had the danger been communicated to Sri Lanka and India immediately after the undersea earthquake, which would have given two hours to warn coastal residents to move to higher ground. On Sunday, there were no such communication channels - and no evacuation protocols in place. Still, the technology exists to provide early warnings, but not to stave off the forces of nature...