Last year's Sumatra tsunami focused its death and destruction on the lands around the Indian Ocean, but the great wave traveled around the world and was recorded as far away as Peru and northeastern Canada.
The wave rose a massive 9.1m as it destroyed communities around the Indian Ocean.
Tide gauges worldwide recorded its arrival from hours to a day after its Dec. 26 start, and movement of the wave also was tracked by satellite, according to a study appearing yesterday in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.
A research team led by Vasily Titov of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle reported the wave moved in a complex pattern as it circled the globe, guided by ocean floor ridges that helped focus its energy in particular places.
The wave traveled several times around the globe before it finally dissipated, Titov reported.
Wave heights recorded at Callao, Peru, 18,345km east of the epicenter of the quake that caused the wave, and at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 23,175km west, were higher than at the Cocos Islands, just over 1,610km south of the quake, the team noted.
The unusually high waves so far from the quake site resulted from both the main east-west direction of the wave's energy and the focusing mechanism of the deep-sea ridges, Titov's team reported.
Other communities where tide gauges recorded arrival of the tsunami included Kodiak, Alaska, 26.4cm; Point Reyes, California, 39.6cm; Corral, Chile, 19.3cm; Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, 45.2cm; Newlyn, England, 5.1cm); and Brest, France, 3.2cm.
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