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Numerical Modeling of the June 17, 2017 Landslide and Tsunami Events in Karrat Fjord, West Greenland

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Abstract

On June 17 2017, the western coast of Greenland was the site of a tsunami which flooded several villages, killing 4 people and destroying 11 houses in the village of Nuugaatsiaq. This tsunami was triggered by a subaerial landslide which occurred in a fjord 32 km ENE of Nuugaatsiaq. This paper presents the numerical modeling of this landslide of \(\sim\) 50 million \(\hbox {m}^{3}\) and of the tsunami propagation from its source to Nuugaatsiaq. The landslide is considered as a granular flow under gravity forces and the water waves generated are related to the displacement of the sea bottom. The results obtained are similar in amplitude to our inferences from videos, i.e., three water waves between 1 and 1.5 m arriving at Nuugaatsiaq with a period of roughly 3 min, and are also in general agreement with the amplitude (1 m) resulting from deconvolution of oscillations recorded on a horizontal seismogram operating at Nuugaatsiaq (NUUG). According to the field survey performed by Fritz et al. (EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, Vol. 20 of EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, p 18345, 2018a) on July 2017, a second mass next to the landslide is threatening Karrat Fjord. A sensitivity study is realized on its volume, with 2, 7, 14 and 38 million \(\hbox {m}^{3}\) reaching the sea. The shape of the water waves is found to be independent of volume, and linearity is observed between the volume and the water wave heights. Finally, the orientation of the slide does not seem to influence either the period or the shape of the generated water waves.

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Notes

  1. To see the videos, click on the links below:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBmkT5y52ng

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzSUDBbSsPI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amWshLXe74s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWvYFMo2LsQ.

  2. Photos of the aerial survey are visible here: https://goo.gl/XRJomU.

  3. This video for example:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amWshLXe74s.

  4. Around 0:46 on this video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBmkT5y52ng.

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Acknowledgements

We thank John Clinton, Director of Seismic Networks, ETH, Zürich, for access to the NUUG seismograms, and for critical metadata concerning their misorientation. Some figures were produced using the GMT software (Wessel and Smith 1991). This work was supported by the LRC Yves Rocard (Laboratoire de Recherche Conventionné CEA-ENS). The paper was improved by the constructive comments of David Tappin and a second, anonymous, reviewer.

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  1. Laboratoire de Géologie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, CNRS UMR8538, PSL Research University, Paris, France

    Alexandre Paris

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Emile A. Okal

  3. CEA, DAM, DIF, 91297, Arpajon Cedex, France

    Alexandre Paris, Cyrielle Guérin, Philippe Heinrich, François Schindelé & Hélène Hébert

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Paris, A., Okal, E.A., Guérin, C. et al. Numerical Modeling of the June 17, 2017 Landslide and Tsunami Events in Karrat Fjord, West Greenland. Pure Appl. Geophys. 176, 3035–3057 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-019-02123-5

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