Tsunami and Nonlinear Waves

Tsunami and Nonlinear Waves
Anjan Kundu – 2007

The need for tsunami research and analysis has grown dramatically following the devastating tsunami of December 2004, which affected Southern Asia. This book pursues a detailed theoretical and mathematical analysis of the fundamentals of tsunamis, especially the evolution and dynamics of tsunamis and other great waves. Of course, it includes specific measurement results from the 2004 tsunami, but the emphasis centres on the nature of the waves themselves and their links to nonlinear phenomena.Throughout, methods of nonlinear dynamics and integrable systems are employed to develop novel concepts for more accurate prediction and hence the reduction of related impacts.

This conference was organized in response to the 2004 tsunami, which killed nearly 300,000 people in coastal communities around the Indian Ocean. We can expect more tsunamis in the future, so now is a good time to think carefully about how to prepare for the next tsunami. With that objective, this paper addresses three broad questions about tsunamis.

1) How do tsunamis work? Is there a simple explanation of the dynamics of tsunamis? What makes them so much more destructive than other ocean waves?

2) Our understanding of the theory of nonlinear waves has advanced significantly in the last forty years because of the development of “soliton theory”, which began with the Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation, to be discussed below. But Korteweg & de Vries derived their now-famous equation in 1895 to describe approximately the evolution of long waves of moderate amplitude in shallow water of uniform depth. What does KdV theory tell us about tsunamis in general, and about the 2004 tsunami in particular?

3) In response to the tsunami of 2004, India and other affected countries have begun plans to implement an early warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean.

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file format .pdf [.rar] , 319 pages , 10.8 MB .