TSUNAMI HEIGHTS MEASURED BY TOP SEISMIC TEAM

Many of us who have been working in Aceh over the past months have discussed the real height of the tsunami in various locations we visited. At one point we climbed to the highwater mark on Pulau Raya where water had surrounded a steep rocky hill where the rampup or run-up would have been minimal. We sighted the horizon against the mast on Batavia and measured a wave height of 22m.



It seems the wave height further north was considerably higher and now the numbers are out. Some areas were hit by a tsunami of over 30m in height! The scale of such a monster wave is beyond most peoples comprehension. I have seen 100ft waves in the Great Australian Bight (measured from trough to peak) but they were not breaking with the force of a wave hitting shallow water.

Think about how hard a 1.5m wave can "dump" you at the beach. Something 2o times as large would be more powerful than anything ever seen or experienced by mankind. It redefines the term "natural disaster" and certainly recalibrates the word "tsunami" forever.

Distribution of the Tsunami Heights of the 2004 Sumatera Tsunami in Banda Aceh measured by the Tsunami Survey Team (The Head: Dr. Tsuji)
The effects of the astronomical tides are removed. These heights are the pure tsunami heights.

The Members of the Tsunami Survey Team
Yoshinobu Tsuji (Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Tokyo, Japan)
Hideo Matsutomi (Akita University, Japan)
Yuichiro Tanioka (Hokkaido University, Japan)
Yuichi Nishimura (Hokkaido University, Japan)
Tsutomu Sakakiyama (Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, Japan)
Takanobu Kamataki (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)
Yoshikane Murakami (Kansai Electric Power, co., inc., Japan)
Andy Moore (Kent State University, USA)
Guy Gelfenbanm (USGS, USA)