Tsunami Animation: Northern Chile, 1 April 2014

Source: PacificTWC 

This is a near real-time animation by NOAA NWS Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for the tsunami from northern Chile on 1 April 2014 resulting from an offshore 8.2 magnitude earthquake in the region. Watch the elapsed time in the upper left corner.

Related article: http://earthsky.org/earth/video-april-1-tsunami-moving-across-pacific?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=a2e146f5c2-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-a2e146f5c2-307918301

Tsunami warning issued after 8.2 quake in Chile

A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water generated by – in this case – an underwater earthquake. Tsunami waves don’t resemble normal sea waves, because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially look like a rapidly rising tide, and for this reason they are often referred to as tidal waves. Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called “wave train”.

The animation shows simulated tsunami wave propagation for 30 hours followed by an “energy map” showing the maximum open-ocean wave heights over that period and the forecasted tsunami runup heights on the coastlines.