Tsunami Pictures

Tsunamis are some of the most devastating natural disasters. The recent Boxing Day Tsunami was generated by an enormous earthquake off the coast of Indonesia on December 26, 2004. Coastlines in Asia were inundated with enormous tsunami surges, killing more than 200,000 people.

Here are some Tsunami pictures capture by satellite that show before and after images of the regions affected by the tsunami.

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This photograph shows the devastation that happened in Sri Lanka on December 26th. This picture was taken by the DigitalGlobe Quickbird satellite, and shows how the whole coastline was inundated with water.

Devastation in Indonesia
Devastation in Indonesia

Perhaps the most devastation from the tsunami occurred in Indonesia. This is an image of the town of Lhoknga, Indonesia. It was completely wiped off the map by the tsunami, except for the white mosque in the center of town.


Northern Sumatra
Northern Sumatra

This photograph, captured by NASA’s Terra satellite shows how the whole northwest coast of the island of Sumatra was hit hard by the tsunami. It looks like the vegetation was just scraped back from the edge of the island.

We have written many articles about the devastation from the 2004 tsunami. Here’s an article about how GPS could be used for a tsunami warning system.

You can get many more tsunami pictures from NASA from their Earth observation page.