Physics

    Mentioned before Tsunamis are primarily associated with with earthquakes in the ocean. As well as landslides and volcanic eruptions can generate a tsunami to create enough energy to emerge. Tsunamis cause damage by the force of water traveling at high speed and the volume of water that crashes onto the land.
    There are many different aspects to the physics of a tsunami and couple have to do with the wavelength, the crest, and period. The wavelength is the distance between two sucessional waves and the long wavelengths that they produce is why they behave in shallow-water waves. As the tsunami crosses the deep ocean, its length from crest to crest may be a hundred miles or more, and its height from crest to trough will only be a few feet or less. In the shallow waters a tsunami can crest to heights exceeding 100 feet. The period is the time between two sucessional waves and for tsunamis there periods can range from ten minutes to two hours.

https://trestlessurfcrowd.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/tsunami-physics-and-trestles/

    Other than the mechanics of a tsunami there is energy, velocity of the sea floor, and equilibrium position that is associated with how much force is applied when crashing down on land can be a big aspect. These are all main factors that attribute to the size of the tsunami when trying to measure or estimate them.
    Energy is gained by the transfer of earths crust from the earthquake or other natural disater that happens under the ocean to the water causing the wave height to grow. The velocity of the tsunami is generated by the sea floor deformation, which will aslo have an affect of the height of the wave. When the velocity of sea floor deforms it causes the main equilibruim position of the water to move, then causing displacement of the water mass resulting in gravity to move in an upward position, making the wave size increase as well.

The position of a wave can be defined as: x(t)=Acos(wt+ φ)
A=Amplitude, w=period, and φ=phase constant
The maximum velocity can be defined as: v=sqrt(g*d) 
g=gravitational constant=9.81m/s^2, d=depth                      

http://www.oceanminds.com/how-shallow-water-explain-tsunami/

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