notforsale

One of the problems with tsunami preparedness is that often the warning can’t be issued fast enough. A recent article in the Huffington Post online talks about a solution that’s so obvious, it’s amazing no one ever thought of it before: Using cargo ships to collect tsunami data (http://tinyurl.com/shiptsu). They’re already out at sea, and on the move. Deep ocean sensors have limits — they are expensive, stuck in one spot, and there aren’t very many of them.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii Manoa, backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who is in charge of providing tsunami warnings, have started the project by equipping 10 ships with tsunami sensors that are providing real-time data. The ship pictured is courtesy of the Maersk Line. Using GPS systems and satellite communications, the ships form a “network of open ocean tide gauges” to augment information provided by the deep ocean sensors already in place.

So how did the UH researchers finally come up with the idea? In 2010, when a tsunami generated by an earthquake in Chile passed one of their research vessels, the onboard equipment accurately recorded the tsunami signal. That was an “aha!” moment, indeed.

— Elleda Wilson