A tsunami happens when a wave transfers the energy it receives from the excitation source to a discernible distance and then comes ashore. They can sometimes occur in rivers as well, and the Moscow River is no exception. This is Alexei Slyunyaev, Professor of Basic Mathematics at the VIAV Gaponov-Grekhov Academy of Sciences, National Research University Higher School of Economics, to socialbites.ca.
Often called landslide tsunamis occur in rivers, but sometimes high-speed ships also act as the cause of such waves.
“Landslides can also occur underwater, then such tsunamis are almost unpredictable. If you do not know how the bottom is arranged and landslides are prepared there, you will not know about the approaching tsunami. Landslides are such sleeping killers. However, if you follow the coastline normally, there is nothing to fear. I am familiar with the work of a Norwegian researcher discussing river waves created under certain conditions by fast ships in the context of tsunami waves. So the causes of a tsunami are not only natural, you can do without a landslide,” explained Slyunyaev.
According to the oceanographer, landslide tsunamis have occurred repeatedly, including recently. So, in 1597, in Nizhny Novgorod, a landslide tsunami happened on the Volga when the monastery slipped into the river and caused huge waves, recorded in the annals.
“The landslide that occurred in 2018 also caused large waves on the Bureya River in the Far East. So tsunamis are not just a story about seas and oceans, they can also occur in rivers with steep banks. There is another striking example: Alaska, 1958. The most famous tsunami wave is more than half a kilometer high when a large mass of earth, stones and ice slides into Lituya Bay and produces a large burst of water on the opposite shore. The forest was washed there,” said Slyunyaev.
Read more about deadly waves, what types of tsunamis are there, how difficult it is to predict such events, and how the weather affects the likelihood of dangerous waves in Turkey. report “socialbites.ca”.