Why are the predictions of the tsunami experts so poor? What can be done to get higher accuracy?
M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
241–250 of 266 posts
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are very literally long wavelength waves though.
So are tides.
Perhaps we can just go back to calling them tidal waves. Which is also ambiguous. I guess if I had any point it's just that it's not colloquial to call tsunami waves, its technical. If anything distinguishing based on how they feel compared to regular wind waves is more colloquial.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#243Why are the predictions of the tsunami experts so poor? What can be done to get higher accuracy?
I don’t think there’s a high false positive rate on these. They do happen pretty rarely, and a false negative is far worse than a false positive. Due to the tsunami wave propagation, it can sometimes take hours for significant waves to reach the coastline.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#244Why are the predictions of the tsunami experts so poor? What can be done to get higher accuracy?
I don’t think there’s a high false positive rate on these. They do happen pretty rarely, and a false negative is far worse than a false positive. Due to the tsunami wave propagation, it can sometimes take hours for significant waves to reach the coastline.
We just had another one in the SF Bay Area a few months ago where they were wildly off.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're a book from the early 1990s called "Tokyo Style" that is packed with photos of real living conditions from back then. Chaos of every variety. Plus some Super Famicom and PC-Engines laying around. A very cool book, most recently reprinted in 2024 with Japanese/English captions.
and the cables, the cables hanging from everywhere! ( btw, has anyone noticed in anime there are always frames of street cabling? Like those cylindrical transformes and thick cables. Almost cyberpunk! )
The transformers are a result of a the lower voltage (also used in America), for efficiency and to keep the required voltage the transformer needs to be nearer to the house.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you’re out of touch. A tsunami is a wave both from a pedantic perspective and an intuitive one and most people aren’t deceived into thinking that tsunamis aren’t dangerous at all because it’s a wave. That’s just made up garbage. You’re like coming up to me and saying hurricane is not wind because it’s dangerous to think of a hurricane as only wind. Dude. Nobody is thinking hurricanes are just chill just becau…
So, I’m sorry that I evidently didn’t manage to convey my point effectively. The problem is that wave is accompanied by a measurement that deceptively buries the lede. Everyone knows hurricanes are wind. So they look for the wind speed to understand the threat. And it’s effective at characterizing the threat. A 100mph wind is going to be similarly destructive as any other 100mph wind. It works and is semantically and…
My understanding is the most deadly/destructive parts of hurricanes are usually:
1. the storm surge, the potential wall of water brought by the continuous winds and waves near the shore, followed by 2. the flooding from heavy rains, then 3. followed by the wind.
So your example might also be hitting the same issue you're trying to avoid.
Note, the worst storm surge is from the eye towards the side where the winds are blowing in the direction of the shore. That's only part of the area with the peak winds.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAFYVpX45xs Here's a video of what it looks like from the 2011 event, from the POV of the coast guard approaching it. Waves don't typically look like a sheet has been flapped across one front of the entire horizon of what is visible on the ocean
Yeah that's a wave bro. Notice how the ocean rises above it's own typical sea level? That's not water "filling in a gap" the way tides do it as sea level changes. That's a huge ass wave as it's a pulse traveling on top of the ocean, above sea level.
That's what it is like out at sea. There's a reason tsunamis are referred to as "tidal waves." For example, watch this video of a tsunami hitting a port today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1B1J6sgFxk
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#248I’m in Costa Rica on vacation, hotel said the beach is closed but they didn’t know why (lol yeah right). Per tsunami alerts it should be hitting right now at 1-3M above tide, I don’t see any evidence on various beach livecams like Taramindo. I’m in puerto Jimenez which is on the inland side of a small peninsula in southern CR so not expecting much.
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#249What happens to the US West coast?
All the tectonics and volcanos that are underground are linked, these seismic events aren't just isolated on islands. I hate to say this but we can expect a major event in August. All I can tell people is to prepare but I see people just with blank expression, there is almost no concern at all which reminds me very much of November 2019.
Evidence?
Re: M8.7 earthquake in Western Pacific, tsunami warning issued
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think he's even right. Like what he is saying is in actuality wrong. He's surprised because he's ignorant. I'm all for people saying stuff the way he says it. He believes it's true, then he should stand behind. But then the consequence is that he needs to be accepting of when people call him out for being utterly wrong.
The difference is that people know what 2m (wind driven) waves look like at their cities seawall. A 2m tsunami is a -completely- different phenomenon, because of its length. Depending upon the underwater geography, a 2m tsunami might flood right over their 3m seawall, and wipe out entire parts of the city, sweeping hundreds of people out to sea. A 2m wind wave will get saltwater spray on cars driving by. They are bot…
Nitpick: while what you say is generally true, there are several scenarios that can create true dramatic “wall of water” tsunami waves that have leading slopes of 45-90 degrees and heights in the tens of meters.
The most obvious (but relatively rare) are tsunamis amplified by submarine canyons and other coastal bathymetry like the Nazare submarine canyon famous for the biggest waves on the planet (50+ footers are common in season). If an earthquake directs a tsunami at that canyon, the resulting waves will be spectacular and probably drown everything north of the cliffs. Unfortunately we don’t have any historical records about what happened at Nazare after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake so we don’t know just how big those waves can get.
Then there’s landslides like the one that caused the 1958 tsunami in Lituya Bay, Alaska which creates a much more sudden displacement than an earthquake. Based on the surrounding mountainsides the wave created from that landslide might have peaked at ~500 meters without the 100+ mile wavelength you’d see in a normal tsunami wave.
The most common however are tidal bores, which can send a 30+ foot vertical wave down rivers and narrow channels. This phenomenon shows up relatively frequently in earthquake youtube videos near rivers, though the wall is usually only 5-10 ft tall.