Shipboard researchers from the University of Hawaii whose instruments unintentionally recorded the passing of a tsunami propose that commercial ships be equipped with similar devices to create an ad-hoc tsunami detection network at a fraction of the cost of deep sea buoys. The scientists were returning from Guam, where they had been measuring sea elevation in February 2010, when their precision GPS picked up a long-wavelength, open-water tsunami generated by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. At sea the tsunami amplitude was 9.4 cm and would have been difficult to discern.
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