I never attended any of Arvid's classes, because I didn't do a BE, but I've known him since a child at Ardmore. His wife was very friendly with my Mum, and he was a colleague of my father. He's still going strong, by the way, almost the last of that cohort I think. On waves, my experience has been on the numerical modelling side, for coastal engineering purposes. Not solitary waves of the tsunami type, of course, but swell (5-20 sec period) that moves sand on beaches, and longer periods that create harbour oscillations. Refraction and diffraction modelling. I know a guy at Caltech who is an expert on tsunami modelling, and I'm sure he'd laugh at the idea that NZ is at risk.
We now know that Peru and Central America didn't see anything, the Marquesas saw a couple of small waves, nothing at the Cook Islands, yet they maintain the warning for the entire coast of NZ! Duckwits. Talk about the boy who cried wolf. Next time there is a serious event people will scoff at the warnings. Mind you, as you point out the events that we really need to be concerned about will not give much time for a warning. |
