Abstract
On 15 January 2022, the Tonga-Hunga submarine volcano erupted in the southwest Pacific Ocean and created strong tsunami waves that had a dual generation mechanism: “direct” (caused by the explosion) and “atmospheric” (induced by propagating atmospheric Lamb waves). Trans-oceanic waves spread across the ocean and were clearly recorded in marginal seas of the northwestern Pacific, including the Sea of Japan. The two distinct types of incoming waves produced a variety of effects in the sea as determined by the wave origin, propagation features and local topographic properties. Statistical and spectral properties of the tsunami waves recorded in the Sea of Japan and vicinity, including the adjacent part of the northwestern Pacific, are the main subject of the present study. The Sea of Japan is a semi-isolated basin connected to the Pacific Ocean through several straits. The features of these straits (widths, depths, and geometry) significantly affected the arriving waves, strongly modifying their statistical characteristics and spectral content. As discussed in detail in this paper, the two types of incoming tsunami waves are consequently transformed in substantially different ways.
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Notes
Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) is an effective network of deep-ocean stations designed for continuous monitoring of tsunami waves in the open ocean and for early tsunami warning (cf. Rabinovich & Eblé, 2015).
The Japanese name is “Soya Strait”.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the Sea Level Station Monitoring Facility of IOC (UNESCO) and the Russian Tsunami Warning Service for providing the coastal tide gauge data, the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency for the coastal tide gauge and the meteorological data, the Weather Underground Wundermap, Sensor.Community network and the International Monitoring System for the meteorological data, and also NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information for the ocean bottom pressure DART data. The authors gratefully acknowledge Sergey Kulichkov and Tatiana Ivelskaya for providing the data and especially Alexander Rabinovich, Richard Thomson, Isaac Fine and Fred Stephenson from the Institute of Ocean Sciences (Sidney, BC, Canada) for valuable comments and suggestions.
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This work was carried out within the framework of the IO RAS state assignment (No. FMWE-2021-0004).
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ET wrote the main manuscript text and made figures. IM polished the text. The data analyses were performed by ET with the help of IM.
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Tsukanova, E., Medvedev, I. The Observations of the 2022 Tonga-Hunga Tsunami Waves in the Sea of Japan. Pure Appl. Geophys. 179, 4279–4299 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-022-03191-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-022-03191-w