Finding more time to detect a tsunami

TSUNAMI are terrible things. And part of their terror lies in their unpredictability. Even when a submarine earthquake that may cause one is detected, the information that is needed to determine whether a giant wave has actually been created takes time to gather. That is time unavailable for the evacuation of coastlines at risk. Contrariwise, issuing a warning when no subsequent wave arrives provokes cynicism and a tendency to ignore future evacuation calls.

Such tsunami-warning systems as do exist rely on seismometers to detect earthquakes, and tide gauges and special buoys to track a wave’s passage. That is reliable, but can often be too late to get people away from threatened coastlines. What these warning systems cannot do reliably is predict immediately whether a given earthquake will cause a tsunami. And that, in the view of some seismologists, is a scandal. For, as the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science learned from Gerald Bawden of NASA, Paul Huang of America’s National Tsunami Warning Centre, Tim Melbourne of Central Washington University, and Meghan Miller of UNAVCO, a geoscience research consortium, the tools for accurate tsunami prediction already exist. All that needs to happen is to connect them up.

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