Explain how longshore currents form. Explain how rip tide ...

[Engineer]

Explain how longshore currents form. Explain how rip tide currents form.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Name two ways that tsunami waves are different from regular waves.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[Ksh22]

Answer to Question 1

Answer: Where refracting waves approach the shoreline at an angle, the water is forced to move parallel to the coast and away from where the waves converge onto the shore. Each arriving wave contributes more water into the longshore current, and this water cannot pile up along the shore because gravity is pulling the excess water back out to sea. As a result, part of the current flows offshore as a rip current.

Answer to Question 2

Answer: 1) Although tall storm waves commonly arrive on distant, sunny coastlines, they rarely arrive without warning. Instead, the wave height builds gradually over many hours or days. Tsunami, in contrast, commonly arrive without warning as a series of several waves of incredible magnitude that can be more than ten meters high. 2) Instead of breaking on the beach, a tsunami wave comes onto land as an ever-rising surge of water that floods inland for more than a kilometer on gently sloping shorelines over a period of tens of minutes. The flood wave then quickly withdraws back to the sea only to be followed by the next wave several minutes to an hour later.