THE way that seabed movements 5 kilometres down triggered the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004 might be explained at last.
Detailed images collected by ships and a submersible which scanned the underwater fault line suggest the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake may have pushed the seafloor up by as much as 12 metres in some places -more than twice the initial estimates of 4 to 6 metres.
Kate Moran of the University of Rhode Island and her team also observed relatively few fresh underwater landslides, which suggested that ground displacement rather than landslides created the tsunami waves.
This information greatly improves tsunami…
