Offshore Islands Might Not Shield Coastlines from Tsunami Waves
Rather than offering protection, islands sometimes cause increased wave run-up on shorelines, experiments in a wave laboratory suggest.
By Katherine Kornei 1 min ago
An offshore island might appear to block incoming tsunami waves, but safety is far from guaranteed in an island’s shadow, new research indicates. Offshore landmasses in fact cause higher levels of wave run-up on mainland coastlines for some types of tsunami waves, according to scale model tests.
These new results have emerged from the first experimental investigation of tsunami inundation on beaches behind islands, conducted by civil engineer James Kaihatu of Texas A&M University in College Station and his colleagues.
https://eos.org/articles/offshore-islands-might-not-shield-coastlines-from-tsunami-waves
