By NNN-PTI
New Delhi: Indian scientists claim to have beaten the newly built tsunami warning system in predicting that the waves triggered by the September 12 undersea tremblor would move towards the open sea keeping the coastline safe.
A team of geophysicists at the Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) forecast within an hour of the quake strike that the tsunami would not hit the southern Indian coast and, Andaman and Nicobar islands.
An earthquake of 8.4 magnitude had struck Bengkulu in southern Sumatra at 4:40 pm IST on September 12 triggering tsunami alerts across the region as well as in India.
“Our preliminary results at 5:40 p.M. Showed that the directivity of the tsunami was towards the open ocean in the southwest direction and India would be safe from tsunami,” Kirti Srivastava, a scientist at NGRI, who conducted the study told PTI.
The Tsunami Early Warning System had taken nearly two hours to forecast that killer waves will not strike the country’s southern coast.
Immediately after the earthquake, a group of scientists at NGRI started simulating the tsunami using the American National Earthquake Information Centre (NEIC) catalogs for focal mechanism solutions estimated for the Bengkulu region, NGRI Director V P Dimri said.
The research paper has been accepted by peer review journal ‘Current Science’ for publication. Besides Srivastava and Dimri, NGRI scientists V Swaroopa and D Srinagesh were involved in the study.