December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami Event

On Sunday December 26, 2004 at 00:58:53 (UTC) or 07:58:53 AM local time an undersea earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 (based on the moment magnitude scale) occurred off of the west coast of Northern Sumatra, approximately 250 km SSE of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia. The epicenter was located at longitude 95.854º and latitude 3.316º. The earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated a large number of coastal countries in the Indian Ocean including Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Somalia, Maldives, Myanmar, and Malaysia to name a few. Over 220,000 people were killed as a result of the tsunami event.

The tsunami hit the northern regions of the Indonesian island of Sumatra relatively quickly. Thailand and Sri Lanka, which are located approximately 550 km and 1600 km from the epicenter respectively, were both impacted by the tsunami approximately two hours after the earthquake. Despite being closer to the epicenter the travel time of the tsunami to both of these countries were comparable as relatively shallow bathymetric features to the east of the Andaman Islands reduced the wave speed as it approached Thailand. The wave inundation was devastating as it destroyed everything in its path.

Banda Aceh (pre-tsunami) June 23, 2004 (image courtesy DigitalGlobe)	Banda Aceh (post-tsunami) December 28, 2004 (image courtesy DigitalGlobe)

Kalutara Sri Lanka (pre-tsunami) January 1, 2004 (image courtesy DigitalGlobe)	Kalutara Sri Lanka (post-tsunami) December 26, 2004 (image courtesy DigitalGlobe)

Nagappattinam (post-tsunami) December 29, 2004 (image courtesy Space Imaging)	Tarangambadi (post-tsunami) December 29, 2004 (image courtesy Space Imaging)

The following are a series of animations created from numerical model results that illustrate the destructive path of the tsunami from various perspectives around the Indian Ocean. Click on the link above the image to view the animation.

Note: The MPEG movies are quite large. They are designed to be saved to your machine and played from your local hard drive, rather than streamed over the internet. To do this, right-click on the link, then choose "Save Target/Link As". The Windows Media animations are playable over the internet if you are running MS Windows, and have a broadband connection.

All animations rendered with X-Vision by Baird Software

© 2005, Baird & Associates