Even in all of its human horror, nature’s destruction in the Japan tsunami carries a kind of awful and mesmeric beauty as it unfolds in this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) video modeling its spread from Japan across the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
NOAA got the information to map the movement of the earthquake’s water-borne energy from buoys deployed throughout the Pacific, known as DARTs, for Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis. In the map below, the DARTs are indicated in red.
Japan’s coastline before and after the tsunami
Richard Gross: Japan earthquake shortened Earth’s day 1.8 millionths of a second
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