Got back home from Philadelphia and watch CNN, ABC, and French channel 2 coverage of the earthquake. The explanation of how a tsunami works on CNN at about 6:15 PM eastern today was appalling...it was all wrong. This is not a joke, when maybe tens of thousands of people were killed (11,000 now). They had a meteorologist who maybe took one earth science class try to explain tsunamis, and she showed a spring, and was talking about P and S waves and surface waves (?) and said that surface waves generated the tsunami. She also said that the earthquake was at 6.2 miles depth. That is 10 km. All of the aftershocks and the mainshock is online at 10 km. This has no meaning, beyond that it was shallow. The earthquake may have ruptured 50,000 or more sq km, at depths from the seafloor to maybe 30 or 40 km depth (maybe deeper). They arbitrarily set the depth at 10 km. The tsunami was not triggered by any particular seismic wave..it was triggered because the seafloor was shoved upwards and to the SW over a distance of 500 or more km...it is like taking a big piece of cardboard in the bathtub and shoving at the water.
ABC news did better...they did not make a serious error, except the USGS geologist talked about it travelling along the bottom...it travels at all depths. At least he was a seismologist. They showed a normal fault quake causing the tsunami, which is possible for a small tsunami but wrong in this case. French news did OK also. Plus, they showed a reverse-slip earthquake...still worng, but closer (was thrust...meaning flatter fault). French news seemed more interested in whether French tourists had lost their luggage than the dead...but it was a 5 hour delay broadcast, so they had that much less time than CNN or ABC to get it right.

I'm going to send an email to some people at the Southern California Earthquake Center to see if anything can be done with hooking up people who know what they are talking about with news organizations, and seeing what can be done about an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system.
Chris

Christopher Sorlien
sorlien@optonline.net
(just serious emails please)