© APDevastation left by the Japanese tsunami
In comparison, Nelson's Column stands 169 feet tall and the pedestrian walkways between the two towers of Tower Bridge are 143 feet above the River Thames. The Rio statue stands at 130ft.
The study by 150 experts from 48 research organisations across the country determined that the wave that roared out of the Pacific on March 11 was the largest to ever hit Japan when it struck the Omoeaneyoshi district of Miyako City, in Iwate Prefecture.
The experts collected data from 5,400 locations the length of the east coast of Japan after the magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake. The survey used marks left on buildings and trees that rise up the sides of the valley where the town is located to reach a conclusion on the scale of the disaster.
The group had previously estimated the height of the tsunami at 127.6 feet, which was already above the 125.3 feet reached by the previous record wave, which was set by the Minami Sanriku Earthquake in 1896.
The research shows that the tsunami was taller than the December 2004 tsunami triggered by the undersea earthquake off Indonesia. That tsunami reached a height of 108 feet and claimed an estimated 230,210 lives in Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.
In comparison, around 25,000 died in the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Though the tsunami was the largest since May 1980, when part of Mount St Helens, in Washington State, collapsed in the course of a volcanic eruption. That landslide surged into nearby Spirit Lake, triggering a megatsunami some 853 feet high.
The largest tsunami recorded to date was the Lituya Bay megatsunami, which occurred on July 9, 1958, when a landslide caused more than 1 trillion cubic feet of rock and ice to fall into the narrow Alaskan inlet of Lituya Bay. The resulting tsunami was measured at 1,720 feet, 470 feet higher than the roof of the Empire State Building.
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