• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

UCNRS

University of California Natural Reserve System

  • Reserves
  • Research
  • Teaching
  • Public Service
  • Information
  • NRS Giving
You are here: Home / Reserves / Bodega Marine Reserve / Radar Detects Early Tsunami Signs

Radar Detects Early Tsunami Signs

August 17, 2011 By Kathleen Wong

Radar Detects Early Tsunami Signs 1

A high-frequency radar array detected the March 11 tsunami that devastated Japan as it swept toward shore. The detection raises hopes for the development of a new early warning system, a Bodega Marine Laboratory oceanographer said.

It was the first time a tsunami has been observed on radar, said Professor John Largier, an oceanographer at the University of California at Davis and an author of a new paper describing the work.

“We have the hardware set up. We have the system operational. It’s a software challenge that we show we can achieve” for the West Coast, Largier told CNN Tuesday. His paper appears this month in the journal Remote Sensing.

A consortium of universities in California already has a high-frequency radar system set up for the West Coast to detect changes in the ocean’s currents. To develop an early warning system for tsunamis on the West Coast, software would be needed, Largier said.

Such a detection system could provide a 15-minute warning for a tsunami approaching northern California and an early warning of an hour for southern California, where the shallow continental shelf along the coast is bigger, Largier said.

The U.S. East Coast and southeast Asia would have to set up a system and software from scratch, but an early detection system could provide an hour’s warning for the Eastern Seaboard and several hours for southeast Asia, where shallow waters extend much further off the coast, Largier said.

Radar Detects Early Tsunami Signs 3

For the past decade, Largier and his colleagues have used a high-frequency radar array along the UC NRS’s Bodega Marine Reserve to study ocean currents off California. That radar array is state-funded, but researchers are concerned about the costs of continuing to operate it, Largier said.

Researchers from Hokkaido and Kyoto universities in Japan and San Francisco State University and Largier used data from radar sites at Bodega Bay; Trinidad, Calif.; and two sites in Hokkaido, Japan, to look for the tsunami offshore.

The radar doesn’t pick up the actual tsunami but rather changes in currents as the wave travels, the scientists said.

As the waves enter shallower coastal water over the continental shelf, they slow down, increase in height and decrease in wavelength, the scientists said.

— Adapted from an article by Michael Martinez, CNN

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to our newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

California Ecology and Conservation

California Ecology and Conservation brings together 27 students from across the UC system for seven weeks of intensive learning at NRS reserves.

Recent Posts

  • UC Santa Cruz offers virtual tour of Younger Lagoon Natural Reserve
  • In memoriam: Antony Orme, 83, geographer, professor, and former White Mountain Research Center director
  • Timeworn cattle ranch remade into NRS reserve
  • Keeping Carpinteria Salt Marsh connected to the tides
  • 2020-21 Mathias Grant recipients
  • Wildfire expands Blue Oak Ranch hydrology study
  • Wildfires spark burn recovery study at 9 UC Natural Reserves
  • Teaching a field program amid a pandemic
  • California Biodiversity Network to protect state’s natural heritage
  • Land donation expands Burns Piñon Ridge Reserve
News Archive

Footer

Our work

Reserves
Research
Teaching
Public Service

About Us

Mission
History
Land Acknowledgement
News
Information
Jobs
Contact

Give

Donate Now

For Staff

Resources
Login

Find Us on Social Media

  • Facebook
  • YouTube

1111 Franklin Street, Oakland CA 94607

© 2021 UCNRS · All Rights Reserved · Contact · Privacy Policy