BBC:
When an underwater earthquake generates a tsunami, every second
counts because it takes only a few minutes before a wall of
water can hit a shoreline. The current early warning system for
tsunamis relies on seismographs to measure Earth movement and
hence calculate the amount of energy dissipated into wave
energy, but the technique is not reliable. A team from the GFZ
German Research Centre for Geosciences says that GPS sensors
placed around the coastlines of vulnerable countries could make
highly precise measurements of how underwater tremors shift the
ground. In turn, the data could be used to reconstruct the
source of the earthquake and calculate its magnitude. "You can
then predict the tsunami and see how high a wave could be
expected, with some accuracy," says Andreas Hoechner, one of
the researchers.
