A high-frequency radar in California detected the March 11 tsunami that devastated Japan, raising hopes for the development of a new early warning system, a University of California at Davis oceanographer said. It was the first time a tsunami has been observed on radar, said Professor John Largier, an oceanographer at the University of California at Davis and an author of a new paper describing the work. "We have the hardware set up. We have the system operational. It’s a software challenge that we show we can achieve" for the West Coast, Largier told CNN Tuesday. His paper appears this month in the journal Remote Sensing.