A detailed map of the Japanese tsunami

Geophysical Research Letters : The 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan last March caused a massive tsunami that devastated whole communities and led to a release of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Nobuhito Mori of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues have now surveyed and mapped the impact of the tsunami along a 2000-km stretch of the coast. In the map below, red bars show the height above sea level, and blue shading indicates how far inland the sea reached. “This tsunami was the first case where modern, well-developed tsunami countermeasures faced such an extreme event,” say the authors. One conclusion they reached was that both hard protection (barriers, structures, and the like) and soft countermeasures (evacuation planning) were “insufficient in this disaster.” Image credit: Geophysical Research Letters 38, L00G14, 6 PP., 2011. Permission obtained from the American Geophysical Union.