Megatsunami

Diagram of the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami, which proved the existence of megatsunamis.

A megatsunami is a term used for a very large wave created by a large, sudden displacement of material into a body of water.

Megatsunamis have quite different features from other, more usual type of tsunamis. Most tsunamis are caused by underwater tectonic activity (movement of the earth's plates) and therefore occur along plate boundaries and as a result of earthquake and rise or fall in the sea floor, causing water to be displaced. Ordinary tsunamis have shallow waves out at sea, and the water piles up to a wave height of up to about 10 metres (33 feet) as the sea floor becomes shallow near land. By contrast, megatsunamis can occur in locations where there is a very large amount of material that suddenly falls into water, or anywhere in water (for meteor impact), or may be caused by volcanic activity, and can have extremely high initial wave heights of hundreds and possibly thousands of metres, far beyond any ordinary tsunami, as the water is "splashed" upwards and outwards by the impact or displacement. As a result, two heights are sometimes quoted for megatsunamis – the height of the wave itself (in water), and the height to which it surges when it reaches land, which depending upon the locale, can be several times larger.

Modern megatsunamis include the one associated with the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (volcanic eruption), the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami (landslide into a bay), and the wave resulting from the Vajont Dam landslide (caused by human activity destabilizing sides of valley). Prehistoric examples include the Storegga Slide (landslide), and the Chicxulub, Chesapeake Bay and Eltanin meteor impacts.

Overview

A megatsunami refers to a tsunami - a large wave due to displacement of a body of water, with an initial wave amplitude (height) measured in several tens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of meters.

Normal tsunamis generated at sea result from movement of the sea floor. They have a small wave height offshore, are very long (often hundreds of kilometers), and generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually of the order of 30 cm (12 in) above the normal sea surface. When they reach land, the wave height increases dramatically as the base of the wave pushes the water column above it upwards.

By contrast, megatsunamis are caused by giant landslides and other impact events. This could also refer to a meteorite hitting an ocean. Underwater earthquakes or volcanic eruptions do not normally generate such large tsunamis, but landslides next to bodies of water resulting from earthquakes can, since they cause a massive amount of displacement. If the landslide or impact occurs in a limited body of water, as happened at the Vajont Dam (1963) and Lituya Bay (1958) then the water may be unable to disperse and one or more exceedingly large waves may result.

A way to visualize the difference, is that an ordinary tsunami is caused by sea floor changes, somewhat like pushing up on the floor of a large tub of water to the point it overflows, and causing a surge of water to "run off" at the sides. In this analogy, a megatsunami would be more similar to dropping a large rock from a considerable height into the tub, at one end, causing water to splash up and out, and overflow at the other end.

Two heights are sometimes quoted for megatsunamis – the height of the wave itself (in water), and the height to which it surges when it reaches land, which depending upon the locale, can be several times larger.

Recognition of the concept of megatsunami

Geologists searching for oil in Alaska in 1953 observed that in Lituya Bay, mature tree growth did not extend to the shoreline as it did in many other bays in the region. Rather, there was a band of younger trees closer to the shore. Forestry workers, glaciologists, and geographers call the boundary between these bands a trim line. Trees just above the trim line showed severe scarring on their seaward side, whilst those from below the trim line did not. The scientists hypothesized that there had been an unusually large wave or waves in the deep inlet. Because this is a recently deglaciated fjord with steep slopes and crossed by a major fault, one possibility was a landslide-generated tsunami.[1]

On 9 July 1958, a 7.8 Mw strike-slip earthquake in southeast Alaska caused 90 million tonnes of rock and ice to drop into the deep water at the head of Lituya Bay. The block fell almost vertically and hit the water with sufficient force to create a wave that surged up the opposite side of the head of the bay to a height of 1720 feet (524 m), and was still many tens of metres high further down the bay, when it carried eyewitnesses Howard Ulrich and his son Howard Jr. over the trees in their fishing boat. They were washed back into the bay and both survived.[1]

Analysis of mechanism

The mechanism giving rise to megatsunamis was analyzed for the Lituya Bay event in a study presented at the Tsunami Society in 1999,[2] although this model was considerably developed and modified by a second study in 2010.

Although the earthquake which caused the megatsunami was considered very energetic, and involving strong ground movements, several possible mechanisms were not likely or able to have caused the resulting megatsunami. Neither water drainage from a lake, nor landslide, nor the force of the earthquake itself led to the megatsunami, although all of these may have contributed.

Instead, the megatsunami was caused by a massive and sudden impulsive impact when about 40 million cubic yards of rock several hundred metres above the bay was fractured from the side of the bay, by the earthquake, and fell "practically as a monolithic unit" down the almost vertical slope and into the bay.[2] The rockfall also caused air to be "dragged along" due to viscosity effects, which added to the volume of displacement, and further impacted the sediment on the floor of the bay, creating a large crater. The study concluded that:

"The giant wave runup of 1,720 feet (524 m.) at the head of the Bay and the subsequent huge wave along the main body of Lituya Bay which occurred on July 9, 1958, were caused primarily by an enormous subaerial rockfall into Gilbert Inlet at the head of Lituya Bay, triggered by dynamic earthquake ground motions along the Fairweather Fault.
The large mass of rock, acted as a monolith (thus resembling high-angle asteroid impact), struck with great force the sediments at bottom of Gilbert Inlet at the head of the bay. The impact created a large crater and displaced and folded recent and Tertiary deposits and sedimentary layers to an unknown depth. The displaced water and the displacement and folding of the sediments broke and uplifted 1,300 feet of ice along the entire front of the Lituya Glacier at the north end of Gilbert Inlet. Also, the impact and the sediment displacement by the rockfall resulted in an air bubble and in water splashing action that reached the 1,720 foot (524 m.) elevation on the other side of the head of Gilbert Inlet. The same rockfall impact, in combination with the strong ground movements, the net vertical crustal uplift of about 3.5 feet, and an overall tilting seaward of the entire crustal block on which Lituya Bay was situated, generated the giant solitary gravity wave which swept the main body of the bay.
This was the most likely scenario of the event - the" PC model" that was adopted for subsequent mathematical modeling studies with source dimensions and parameters provided as input. Subsequent mathematical modeling at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Mader, 1999, Mader & Gittings, 2002) supported the proposed mechanism - as there was indeed sufficient volume of water and an adequately deep layer of sediments in the Lituya Bay inlet to account for the giant wave runup and the subsequent inundation. The modeling reproduced the documented physical observations of runup."

A 2010 model examined the amount of infill on the floor of the bay, which was many times larger than that of the rockfall alone, and also the energy and height of the waves, and the accounts given by eyewitnesses, concluded that there had been a "dual slide" involving a rockfall, which also triggered a release of 5 to 10 times its volume of sediment trapped by the adjacent Lituya Glacier, as an almost immediate and many times larger second slide, a ratio comparable with other events where this "dual slide" effect is known to have happened.[3]

List of megatsunamis

Prehistoric

Historic

Modern

1792: Mount Unzen, Japan

In 1792, Mount Unzen in Japan erupted, causing part of the volcano to collapse into the sea. The landslide caused a megatsunami that reached 100 metres (330 ft) high and killed 15,000 people in the local fishing villages.

1883: Krakatoa

The eruption of Krakatoa created pyroclastic flows which generated megatsunamis when they hit the waters of the Sunda Strait on 27 August 1883. The waves reached heights of up to 24 meters (79 feet) along the south coast of Sumatra and up to 42 meters (138 feet) along the west coast of Java.[14]

1958: Lituya Bay, Alaska, USA

Damage from the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami can be seen in this oblique aerial photograph of Lituya Bay, Alaska as the lighter areas at the shore where trees have been stripped away.

On July 9, 1958, a giant landslide at the head of Lituya Bay in Alaska, caused by an earthquake, generated a wave with an initial amplitude of up to 520 metres (1,710 ft). This is the highest wave ever recorded, and surged over the headland opposite, stripping trees and soil down to bedrock, and surged along the fjord which forms Lituya Bay, destroying a fishing boat anchored there and killing two people. Howard Ulrich and his son managed to ride the wave in their boat, and both survived.[1]

1963: Vajont Dam, Italy

Main article: Vajont Dam

On October 9, 1963, a landslide above Vajont Dam in Italy produced a 250 m (820 ft) surge that overtopped the dam and destroyed the villages of Longarone, Pirago, Rivalta, Villanova and Faè, killing nearly 2,000 people.[15]

1980: Spirit Lake, Washington, USA

On May 18, 1980, the upper 460 meters (1,509 feet) of Mount St. Helens collapsed, creating a massive landslide. This released the pressure on the magma trapped beneath the summit bulge which exploded as a lateral blast, which then released the over-pressure on the magma chamber and resulted in a plinian eruption.

One lobe of the avalanche surged onto Spirit Lake, causing a megatsunami which pushed the lake waters in a series of surges, which reached a maximum height of 260 meters (853 feet)[16] above the pre-eruption water level (~975 m asl/3,199 ft). Above the upper limit of the tsunami, trees lie where they were knocked down by the pyroclastic surge; below the limit, the fallen trees and the surge deposits were removed by the megatsunami and deposited in Spirit Lake.[17]

Potential future megatsunamis

Experts interviewed by the BBC think that a massive landslide on a volcanic ocean island is the most likely future cause of a megatsunami.[18] The size and power of a wave generated by such means could produce devastating effects, travelling across oceans and inundating up to 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland from the coast.

British Columbia

Some geologists consider an unstable rock face at Mount Breakenridge, above the north end of the giant fresh-water fjord of Harrison Lake in the Fraser Valley of southwestern British Columbia, Canada, to be unstable enough to collapse into the lake, generating a megatsunami that might destroy the town of Harrison Hot Springs (located at its south end).[19]

Canary Islands

Geologists Dr. Simon Day and Dr. Steven Neal Ward consider that a megatsunami could be generated during a future eruption of Cumbre Vieja on the volcanic ocean island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, Spain.[20][21]

In 1949, this volcano erupted at its Duraznero, Hoyo Negro and Llano del Banco vents, and there was an earthquake with an epicentre near the village of Jedy. The next day Juan Bonelli Rubio, a local geologist, visited the summit area and found that a fissure about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) long had opened on the east side of the summit. As a result, the west half of the volcano (which is the volcanically active arm of a triple-armed rift) had slipped about 2 metres (6.6 ft) downwards and 1 metre (3.3 ft) westwards towards the Atlantic Ocean,[22]

Cumbre Vieja is currently dormant, but will almost certainly erupt again. Day and Ward hypothesize[20][21] that if such an eruption causes the western flank to fail, a mega-tsunami could be generated.

La Palma is currently the most volcanically active island in the Canary Islands Archipelago. It is likely that several eruptions would be required before failure would occur on Cumbre Vieja.[20][21] However, the western half of the volcano has an approximate volume of 500 cubic kilometres (120 cu mi) and an estimated mass of 1.5 trillion metric tons (1.7×1012 short tons). If it were to catastrophically slide into the ocean, it could generate a wave with an initial height of about 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) at the island, and a likely height of around 50 metres (164 ft) at the Caribbean and the Eastern North American seaboard when it runs ashore eight or more hours later. Tens of millions of lives could be lost in the cities and/or towns of St. John's, Halifax, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, Havana and the rest of the Eastern Coasts of the United States and Canada, as well many other cities on the Atlantic coast in Europe, South America and Africa.[20][21] The likelihood of this happening is a matter of vigorous debate.[23]

The last eruption on the Cumbre Vieja occurred in 1971 at the Teneguia vent at the southern end of the sub-aerial section without any movement. The section affected by the 1949 eruption is currently stationary and does not appear to have moved since the initial rupture.[24]

Geologists and volcanologists are in sharp disagreement about whether an eruption on the Cumbre Vieja would cause a single large gravitational landslide or a series of smaller landslides, or whether a slide is likely at all. There are also questions about the dynamics. Day and Ward have admitted that their original analysis of the danger was based on several worst case assumptions.[25][26]

Hawaii

Sharp cliffs and associated ocean debris at the Kohala Volcano, Lanai and Molokai indicate that landslides from the flank of the Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes in Hawaii may have triggered past megatsunamis, most recently at 120,000 BP.[27][28][29] A future tsunami event is also possible, with the tsunami potentially reaching up to about 1 kilometre (3,300 ft) in height.[30][31] According to the documentary National Geographic's Ultimate Disaster: Tsunami, if a big landslide occurred at Mauna Loa or the Hilina Slump, a 30 metres (98 ft) tsunami would take only thirty minutes to reach Honolulu, Hawaii. There, hundreds of thousands of people could be killed as the tsunami could level Honolulu and travel 25 kilometres (16 mi) inland. Also, the West Coast of America and the entire Pacific Rim could potentially be affected.

Cape Verde Islands

Steep cliffs on the Cape Verde Islands have been caused by catastrophic debris avalanches. These have been common on the submerged flanks of ocean island volcanoes and more can be expected in the future.[32]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Miller, Don J. "Giant Waves in Lituya Bay, Alaska". uwsp.edu. p. 3. Archived from the original on 13 October 2014.
  2. 1 2 The Mega-Tsunami of July 9, 1958 in Lituya Bay, Alaska: Analysis of Mechanism - George Pararas-Carayannis, Excerpts from Presentation at the Tsunami Symposium of Tsunami Society of May 25–27, 1999, in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
  3. ↑ THE 1958 LITUYA BAY LANDSLIDE AND TSUNAMI — A TSUNAMI BALL APPROACH, Ward and DAY, Journal of earthquake and Tsunami, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2010) 285–319, DOI: 10.1142/S1793431110000893
  4. ↑ "Armageddon" Episode 2.3 (2007) of Lost Worlds, The History Channel, original air date: 15 August 2007.
  5. ↑ Poag, C. W. (1997). "The Chesapeake Bay bolide impact: A convulsive event in Atlantic Coastal Plain evolution". Sedimentary Geology 108 (1–4): 45–90. Bibcode:1997SedG..108...45P. doi:10.1016/S0037-0738(96)00048-6.
  6. ↑ Le Roux, J.P.; Nielsen, Sven N.; Kemnitz, Helga; Henriquez, Álvaro (2008). "A Pliocene mega-tsunami deposit and associated features in the Ranquil Formation, southern Chile" (PDF). Sedimentary Geology 203 (1): 164–180. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  7. ↑ "Hawaiian landslides have been catastrophic". mbari.org. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.
  8. ↑ Culliney, John L. (2006) Islands in a Far Sea: The Fate of Nature in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 17.
  9. ↑ Gardner, J.V. (July 2000). "The Lake Tahoe debris avalanche". 15th Annual Geological Conference. Geological Society of Australia.
  10. ↑ Bondevik, S.; Lovholt, F.; Harbitz, C.; Mangerud, J.; Dawsond, A.; Svendsen, J. I. (2005). "The Storegga Slide tsunami—comparing field observations with numerical simulations". Marine and Petroleum Geology 22 (1–2): 195–208. doi:10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2004.10.003.
  11. ↑
  12. ↑ Pareschi, M. T.; Boschi, E.; Favalli, M. (2006). "Lost tsunami". Geophysical Research Letters 33 (22): L22608. Bibcode:2006GeoRL..3322608P. doi:10.1029/2006GL027790.
  13. ↑ "Mega-tsunami: Wave of Destruction". BBC Two. 12 October 2000.
  14. ↑ Bryant, Edward, Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard, Springer: New York, 2014, ISBN 978-3-319-06132-0, pp. 162-163.
  15. ↑ http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/Dutch/VTrips/Vaiont.HTM Vaiont Dam photos and virtual field trip (University of Wisconsin), retrieved 2009-07-01
  16. ↑ Voight et al. 1983
  17. ↑ USGS Website. Geology of Interactions of Volcanoes, Snow, and Water: Tsunami on Spirit Lake early during 18 May 1980 eruption
  18. ↑ Mega-tsunami: Wave of Destruction. Transcript. BBC Two television programme, first broadcast 12 October 2000
  19. ↑ Evans, S.G.; Savigny, K.W. (1994). "Landslides in the Vancouver-Fraser Valley-Whistler region" (PDF). Geological Survey of Canada. Ministry of Forests, Province of British Columbia. pp. 36 p. Retrieved 2008-12-28.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Day et al. 1999
  21. 1 2 3 4 Ward & Day 2001
  22. ↑ Bonelli 1950
  23. ↑ Pararas-Carayannis 2002
  24. ↑ As per Bonelli Rubio
  25. ↑ Ali Ayres (2004-10-29). "Tidal wave threat 'over-hyped'". BBC NEWS.
  26. ↑ Pararas-Carayannis, George (2002). "Evaluation of the threat of mega tsunami generation from postulated massive slope failures of the island volcanoes on La Palma, Canary Islands, and on the island of Hawaii". Science of Tsunami Hazards 20 (5): 251–277. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
  27. ↑ McMurtry, Gary M.; Fryer, Gerard J.; Tappin, David R.; Wilkinson, Ian P.; Williams, Mark; Fietzke, Jan; Garbe-Schoenberg, Dieter; Watts, Philip (1 September 2004). "Megatsunami deposits on Kohala volcano, Hawaii, from flank collapse of Mauna Loa". Geology 32 (9): 741. Bibcode:2004Geo....32..741M. doi:10.1130/G20642.1.
  28. ↑ McMurtry, Gary M.; Fryer, Gerard J.; Tappin, David R.; Wilkinson, Ian P.; Williams, Mark; Fietzke, Jan; Garbe-Schoenberg, Dieter; Watts, Philip (September 1, 2004). "A Gigantic Tsunami in the Hawaiian Islands 120,000 Years Ago". Geology, Volume 32. SOEST Press Releases. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
  29. ↑ McMurtry, G. M.; Tappin, D. R.; Fryer, G. J.; Watts, P. (December 2002). "Megatsunami Deposits on the Island of Hawaii: Implications for the Origin of Similar Deposits in Hawaii and Confirmation of the 'Giant Wave Hypothesis'". AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts 51: 0148. Bibcode:2002AGUFMOS51A0148M.
  30. ↑ Pararas-Carayannis, George (2002). "Evaluation of the threat of mega tsunami generation from postulated massive slope failures of island volcanoes on La Palma, Canary Islands, and on the island of Hawaii". drgeorgepc.com. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
  31. ↑ Britt, Robert Roy (14 December 2004). "The Megatsunami: Possible Modern Threat". LiveScience. Retrieved 2008-12-20.
  32. ↑ Le Bas, T.P. (2007). "Slope Failures on the Flanks of Southern Cape Verde Islands". In Lykousis, Vasilios. Submarine mass movements and their consequences: 3rd international symposium. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-6511-8

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