The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the U.S. tsunami warning system has been bolstered by two new tsunami detection buoys in the South Pacific.

This vast network of 39 stations provides real-time data to the tsunami warning system in order to provide coastal communities in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico with faster and more accurate tsunami warnings.

These final deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunami (DART) stations, deployed off the Solomon Islands, will give NOAA forecasters real-time data about tsunami that could potentially strike the U.S. Pacific coast, Hawaii and U.S. Pacific territories.

Tsunami sensors are now positioned between Hawaii and every seismic zone that could generate a tsunami that would affect the state and beyond, including the U.S. West Coast. Buoys already in the western Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean have been keeping watch over the U.S East and Gulf coasts.

“Completing the U.S. tsunami warning system is truly a monumental triumph that includes the advancement of the science, the
development and testing of cutting edge technology, and the large scale project management skills that brought it all together on a global scale,” said retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, and NOAA
administrator.

“As a young scientist who researched tsunamis and built early models of their effects, I never imagined that we could come so far in our ability to understand, to detect, to model and to warn on such a scale as we have just achieved," he said.