The tallest tsunami in recorded history was 524 meters (1,720 feet) high—taller than the Empire State Building—and occurred in Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 after an earthquake dislodged a rockface into the water.

View the 10 largest earthquakes ever recorded as of 2025, led by a 1960 magnitude 9.5 earthquake in Chile, which left about 2 million people unhoused.

A tsunami—Japanese for 'harbor wave'—can begin with a drop in sea level before rising, which has contributed to its mistaken categorization as a tidal wave, despite being unrelated to the moon's gravity.

Rather than being triggered by a massive displacement of water from a geological event, meteotsunamis are caused by rapid changes in air pressure from fast-moving weather systems.

Although earthquakes cause about 80% of tsunamis, almost all earthquakes lack sufficient energy to cause the sudden shift in the ocean floor needed to substantially displace enormous volumes of water.

Tsunamis are a series of waves rather than a single one, and boats are safer from them in deeper waters, where tsunami waves are smaller.

Explore an interactive time-lapse of reported tsunami events since 1850, with identified cause, recorded observations, known deaths, and other information available for each.

From 1610 BCE to 2025 CE, at least 250 of the over 3,000 confirmed tsunamis were deadly, and the 2004 Indonesia tsunami was the deadliest, with over 227,000 casualties.

Infrastructure built to limit tsunami damage includes channels to divert water, floodgates, and seawalls, such as the approximately 400-kilometer (249-mile) wall built in Japan after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

As of 2026, the world's largest tropical cyclone was Typhoon Tip, whose size spanned the equivalent of half the continental US.

Tsunamis can last for days as their successive waves hit a coastal area, with early warning systems indicating the likelihood of a tsunami's arrival on a scale from watch to advisory to warning.

View a tsunami travel time map to learn how many hours its waves are estimated to take to reach different parts of Earth when originating from a list of geologically active locations.

Wave tanks can be used to create and study the impacts of tsunamis by building tension in an underwater object before allowing it to slip and rapidly displace water.

The world's largest earthquake simulator is an 800-ton shake table facility in Miki, Japan, which was built to test the resilience of structures after the 1995 Kobe earthquake killed over 6,000 people.

The Tsar Bomba was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested

In 1961, the Soviet Union detonated AN602—known as the Tsar Bomba—the largest nuclear explosion in history. Newly released Russian footage starkly illustrates the unmatched destructive power of this nuclear weapon.

The Atlantic Ocean is home to the world's largest waterfall—the Denmark Strait cataract—which is more than three times the height of the largest land-based waterfall.

Hurricane Helene dumped enough water to fill Lake Tahoe

Alongside a rainstorm that moved into the region ahead of it, the hurricane released an unprecedented 40 trillion gallons of rain on the southeastern US, causing catastrophic flooding and at least 100 deaths. Meteorologists suggest climate change is exacerbating the severity of such events.

Because seismic waves travel 100 times faster than tsunami waves—waves typically travel faster through solids than liquids—measurements of geological activity help tsunami detection systems provide early warnings.

NASA's GUARDIAN software uses changes in satellite navigation signals and AI-powered detection algorithms to anticipate tsunamis and provide real-time alerts to at-risk communities before the phenomena are detected by tidal sensors.

View the 10 biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history

The Mount Tambora eruption in 1815 was the deadliest and released so much sun-blocking ash and gas that 1816 became known as “the year without summer.” The resulting global food shortages are estimated to have killed over 71,000 people.

The biggest ocean waves in the world, which regularly reach between 80 and 100 feet, are primarily caused by a 140-mile-long submarine canyon that reaches a maximum depth of 16,000 feet.

Mapping the Tongan eruption impact

A team of scientists—with the help of an uncrewed boat remotely controlled from the UK—join forces to produce one of the clearest pictures to date of what took place underneath the water as an enormous volcano erupted near the Tongan mainland.

The 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald spurred a number of maritime changes

One of the worst Great Lakes shipwrecks in modern history, the freighter sank during an intense storm on Lake Superior that reportedly produced 50-foot waves. The exact cause remains unknown, and the disaster remains in public consciousness today.

If, not when: An earthquake is destined to destroy the Pacific Northwest.

When the Cascadia fault line ruptures, it could be North America’s worst natural disaster in recorded history. Read a deep dive into the history of the region and the potential impact of the eventual seismic boom.

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid larger than Mount Everest struck Earth off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula and wiped out at least 75% of all species, including nearly all dinosaurs.

Why Turkey's earthquakes were so deadly

The death toll from February 2023 has reached the tens of thousands, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century. The intense seismic activity combined with poor and unregulated construction in many areas to drive fatalities....

The death toll of the atomic bombings in Japan remains disputed, with estimates ranging from 110,000 to 210,000.

In 1962, the US detonated a nuclear weapon in space, which produced an electromagnetic pulse that disabled three low Earth orbit satellites and damaged electrical equipment in Hawaii.

How the Turkish earthquake created a 100-mile rupture

A February 2023 earthquake devastated parts of Turkey and Syria destroying entire blocks, with more than 50,000 people killed. A scientific analysis revealed a fault line with a 100-mile-long rupture, where separate tectonic plates moved more than...

A magnitude 25 earthquake would release enough energy to destroy the sun, while a particle of dust drifting onto a table would have a magnitude of about -15.

Micro-seismic activity has been produced from people cheering or dancing at sporting events, concerts, and other large gatherings, but scientists can easily distinguish these vibrations from natural earthquakes using seismometers.

38 thought-provoking facts about the ocean

Coral produces its own sunscreen, tsunamis move at 500 miles per hour, one of the loudest sounds ever recorded came from an ice quake, and other interesting facts collected from sources such as National Geographic and NASA.

Small elevation differences drastically protect homes in hurricanes

The construction of seaside homes has long involved building residences on elevated stilts, but this feature adds costs—and some elevated homes still fail. Explore the engineering behind the ideal height of a hurricane-proof building.

As of 2025, the longest lightning bolt in the world spanned several states

Although the average bolt measures less than 16 kilometers (10 miles), the 2017 "megaflash" spanned 829 kilometers (515 miles) from eastern Texas to Missouri. Severe thunderstorms are common in the region, where warm, humid air from the Gulf collides with cool, dry air from the north, generating atmospheric instability.

The atomic bombs dropped on Japan had massive human costs

The US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed around 210,000 people—more than 38,000 of them estimated to be children—with tens of thousands more later dying from radiation-linked illnesses, leaving lifelong trauma and increased cancer risks.

Storm surges, not winds, are the leading cause of hurricane-related fatalities

A storm surge is an abnormal rise in water levels generated by a storm that exceeds predicted tides. It is particularly dangerous in coastal regions, where it can generate extreme flooding well before the hurricane makes landfall.

Research suggests a 95-kilometer-wide (59-mile-wide) asteroid impact could boil the Earth's oceans

Even a 1-kilometer-wide (0.62-mile-wide) asteroid can trigger earthquakes and tsunamis on impact with oceans. The overwhelming majority of asteroids that reach Earth are much smaller and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.

The frequency of earthquakes and the distribution of their magnitudes have not changed significantly over long-term records, but technological improvements have enabled scientists to detect more of them as they occur.

Reported earthquake magnitudes often change because initial values are based on limited information, whereas revised magnitudes account for factors such as fault size, rupture duration, and seismic wave behavior.

Supervolcanoes can eject enough material to fill one-fourth of the Grand Canyon

Although extremely rare, their released material can trigger winters by blocking the sun and cooling the Earth’s surface for years. The Toba supereruption 74,000 years ago disrupted food chains and reduced the human population to a few thousand.

Mount Everest may be considered the tallest mountain on Earth, but the summit of Ecuador's Mount Chimborazo is more than a mile further away from Earth's center than the top of Everest.

The list of historic volcanic eruptions includes the 1883 blast from Krakatau, which killed more than 36,000 and was the first such event to be documented in real time, thanks to the telegraph.

Explore an interactive map of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis from 2150 BCE to the present.

What makes the world's biggest waves?

Some of the world’s biggest waves, routinely reaching 100 feet high, are formed near the town of Nazaré, Portugal. But what makes this area so prone to massive swells? While a number of factors are involved, the key feature is the Nazaré Canyon,...

Every day, lightning releases several Hiroshima bombs' worth of energy into the atmosphere

If all this lightning struck one location at once, the bolt would be the diameter of the center circle of a basketball court, turning the entire court into a crater. Its heat would ignite surfaces for miles around, and its shockwave would demolish buildings.

Techniques to earthquake-proof a building include the use of counterweights, such as a massive column or pendulum, to dampen the impact of seismic activity and isolating a building's structure from its base.

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan, killing at least 80,000 people instantly.

Texas experienced the most natural disasters of any US state, with 372 natural disaster declarations from 1953 to 2025.

Earthquakes of identical magnitudes are unlikely to cause equal damage because magnitude only measures energy released, and earthquake severity depends on environmental factors, such as local architecture and geological conditions.

Read an eyewitness account of the sinking of the Titanic.

The deadliest aspect of volcanic eruptions is often not lava, but pyroclastic flows—avalanches of ash, gas, and rock that can move more than half the speed of sound.