Surface water waves and tsunamis

• Main Author: Walter Craig
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.644.8142; http://ms.mcmaster.ca/craig/PASI-VI-2_JDDE1133.pdf

devastating tsunami which followed, I have chosen the focus of my mini-course lectures at this year's PASI to be on two topics which involve the dynamics of surface water waves. These topics are of interest to mathematicians interested in wave propagation, and particularly to Chilean scientists, I believe, because of Chile's presence on the tectonically active Pacic Rim. My rst lecture will describe the equations of uid dynamics for the free surface above a body of uid (the ocean surface), and the linearized equations of motion. From this we can predict the travel time of the recent tsunami from its epicenter o of the north Sumatra coast to the coast of nearby Thailand, the easy coasts of Sri Lanka and south India, and to Africa. In fact the signal given by ocean waves generated by the Sumatra earthquake was felt globally; within 48 hours distinguishable tsunami waves were measured by wave gages in Antarctica, Chile, Rio di Janeiro, the west coast of Mexico, the east coast of the United States, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia. To describe ocean waves we will formulate the full nonlinear uid dynamical