Rather than travelling straight across the Pacific Ocean, the Sumatran tsunami of December 2004 (pictured) took a roundabout route. It headed southwards towards Antarctica before looping back up to arrive at the northwest coast of North America. The 22,000-kilometre-long trip followed mid-oceanic ridges.
Alexander Rabinovich of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Sidney, British Columbia, and his co-workers analysed data from pressure sensors deep in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The team detected tsunami waves at the first sensors around 34–35 hours after the earthquake and inferred the waves' direction by analysing their time of arrival at different sensors.
The waves continued for 3.5 days, suggesting that tsunamis produce a long-lasting energy flux that is conserved and transmitted by oceanic ridges.
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A tsunami's trip around the world. Nature 473, 9 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/473009d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/473009d
