The Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 was not the first of its size to hit the region, according to new research. A massive Indian Ocean tsunami, similar in size to the one that claimed 230,000 lives in 2004, smashed into Thailand and Indonesia around 600 years ago.
Before and after photos show the sediment coverage after the 2004 tsunami
Rachel Zelkowitz in ScienceNOW:
Within a week of the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, geologist Kruawun Jankaew set out from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok to survey the devastation on the southern coast of her country. What she saw shocked her. “I never thought such a thing could happen,” she recalls. “In some places, we could still smell dead bodies.”
But the catastrophe, which killed more than 225,000 people across Southeast Asia, also gave Jankaew and other researchers an unprecedented opportunity to understand what scars such a disaster leaves on the physical landscape. By comparing sand deposits from the tsunami to deeper layers in the soil, two independent teams of scientists now conclude that a similar killer wave struck the region 500 to 700 years ago. More:
Click here to view the interactive graphic in Nature.
And the BBC report:
The findings, reported in Nature, could be used to put statistical weight behind estimates of future tsunami.
The surge of a tsunami brings with it a great deal of sediment that rushes inland; the bigger the tsunami, the deeper and further inland the layer of sediment it leaves behind.
In locations where those deposits aren’t disturbed by wind or running water, they can be used as a historical record of these powerful events after more layers are added. More:
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