Tsunami

A tsunami (plural: tsunamis or tsunami; from Japanese :lit. "harbor wave";English pronunciation, also known as a seismic sea wave, is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, generally an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes , volcanoes eruption and other under water explosions (including detonations of underwater nuclear devices), landslides, glacier calving ,meteorite impacts and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.

Tsunami waves do not resemble normal sea waves, because their wave length is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide, and for this reason they are often referred to as tidal waves. Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called "wave train".