The evacuation of all 2,000 inhabitants of Cataret Island marked the beginning of the end for many low-lying atolls in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.   Rising sea levels have flooded the food and fresh water sources on this small island off Papua, New Guinea, and made it necessary to relocate the inhabitants to nearby Bougainville.
According [...]

            Passengers on a cruise ship probably don’t realize they are often sailing over mountain peaks at many points along their route.  The mountain under their keel may be part of the Mid-Ocean Ridge or a free standing seamount.
Mid-Ocean Ridge.  The seafloor is home to the longest continuous mountain range in the world.  The Mid-Ocean [...]

 
                At 7:49 a.m. on April 13, 2010, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake shook Qinghai, a province of China on the Tibetan Plateau, killing more than 2,000 people and injuring over 12,000.  Many thousands of structures in the area were flattened.
                Two years earlier, on May 12, 2008, a 7.9 magnitude quake struck to the southeast [...]

Try to imagine a solid block of ocean hundreds of miles long, 3 miles deep, and as wide as the coastline, coming toward you at 500 to 600 miles an hour.  That describes a tsunami in deep water racing toward land.  A tsunami’s speed slows as it encounters the coastline but the total water mass [...]