Introduction
The island of Sri Lanka has a coastline about 1,585 km long, increasing to 1,700 km when the Jaffna Lagoon is included. The climate is tropical, subject to the northeast (December to early March) and the southwest (late May to early October) monsoons: there is a wet zone in the southwest, where Colombo has a mean annual rainfall of 2,034 mm of which only 370 mm occurs between December and March, and a dry zone in the rest of the island. Winds rarely attain gale force except in gusts during the monsoons, but occasional cyclones (occurring about once in a decade) affect the northern coast. Waves are generated by the monsoons and local winds, and there is a southerly swell produced by storms in high southern latitudes and arriving across the Indian Ocean. This diminishes northward along the west coast, and is reduced by refraction along the east coast. Mean spring tide range is less than 1 m around Sri Lanka: Colombo and Trincomalee both have 0.6 m.
Tsunamis are rare, but a...
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References
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(2010). Sri Lanka. In: Bird, E.C.F. (eds) Encyclopedia of the World's Coastal Landforms. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8639-7_200
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