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A Comparative Analysis of Coastal and Open-Ocean Records of the Great Chilean Tsunamis of 2010, 2014 and 2015 off the Coast of Mexico

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Abstract

The three great earthquakes off the coast of Chile on 27 February 2010 (Maule, M w 8.8), 1 April 2014 (Iquique, M w 8.2) and 16 September 2015 (Illapel, M w 8.3) generated major transoceanic tsunamis that spread throughout the Pacific Ocean and were measured by numerous coastal tide gauges and open-ocean DART stations. Statistical and spectral analyses of the tsunami waves from the events recorded on the Pacific coast of Mexico enabled us to estimate parameters of the waves along the coast and to compare statistical features of the events. We also identified three coastal “hot spots” (sites having maximum tsunami risk): Puerto Angel, Puerto Madero and Manzanillo. Based on the joint spectral analyses of the tsunamis and background noise, we have developed a method for using coastal observations to determine the underlying spectrum of tsunami waves in the deep ocean. The “reconstructed” open-ocean tsunami spectra are in close agreement with the actual tsunami spectra evaluated from direct analysis of the DART records offshore of Mexico. We have further used the spectral estimates to parameterize the energy of the three Chilean tsunamis based on the total open-ocean tsunami energy and frequency content of the individual events.

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Notes

  1. DART = Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis, is an effective network of deep-ocean stations elaborated for continuous monitoring of tsunami waves in the open ocean and early tsunami warning (cf. Titov 2009; Mofjeld 2009; Mungov et al. 2013; Rabinovich and Eblé 2015).

  2. The first wave at Salina Cruz was also quite strong, but slightly weaker than the wave that arrived after 12.5 h (Fig. 4).

  3. This is a typical definition in spectral analysis. In analogy with light, a “red spectrum” is one in which energy is mainly at low frequencies and decreases with increasing frequency; a “blue spectrum” has most energy at high frequencies and energy increases with increasing frequency. A “white spectrum” has uniform energy distribution (cf. Thomson and Emery 2014).

  4. We qualify this by noting that the “source function” can be indicative not only of the initial seismic source but also of secondary remote sources associated with open ocean tsunami wave scattering and reflection.

  5. M w 8.4 according to Heidarzadeh et al. (2016).

  6. In actuality, this tsunami was recorded by a few more tide gauges, in particular, Guerrero Negro, but the records were of poor quality.

  7. A very similar situation is observed at Prince Rupert on the northern coast of British Columbia where only ultra-long tsunami oscillations are recorded (with T > 1 h), while high-frequency signals arriving at this station are strongly attenuated (filtered) by Dixon Entrance (a wide strait) and by the shelf adjacent to the station, playing the role of an effective low-pass filter (Rabinovich et al. 2013a).

  8. This is the mean amplitude; tsunami waves at specific sites with large Q-factor and strong resonant properties may be much higher.

  9. The physical sense of this coefficient is similar to the ‘generation coefficient’ introduced by Šepić and Rabinovich (2014) to characterize the sea level response to small-scale atmospheric disturbances and the efficiency of meteotsunami generation along the East Coast of the United States.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Mexican National Polytechnic Institute (IPN, project SIP 20161036). Additional support for the first author was provided by SNI (Mexican National System of Investigators). For ABR this study was partly supported by the NOAA project WE-133R-15-SE-1608 and RSF Grant 14-50-00095. We gratefully acknowledge the Mexican National Mareographic Service of the UNAM and the Laboratory of the Sea Level of the CICESE for providing us the data of coastal sea level gauges, as well as George Mungov (NOAA/NCEI, Boulder, Colorado) for assisting us with the DART data. We also thank Vasily Titov and Rachel Tang (NOAA/PMEL, Seattle, WA) and Isaac Fine (IOS, Sidney, BC) for providing us the results of numerical modeling of the 2010, 2014 and 2015 Chilean tsunamis, Paul Whitmore and Stanley Goosby (NTWC, Palmer, AK) for presenting us precise ETAs for the three tsunamis recorded by DARTs 46412, 43412 and 43413 offshore of Mexico, and Maxim Krassovski (IOS, Sidney, BC) for helping with the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas, Ave. IPN, s/n, Playa Palo de Santa Rita, 23096, La Paz, BCS, Mexico

    Oleg Zaytsev

  2. Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Institute of Ocean Sciences, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC, V8L 4B2, Canada

    Alexander B. Rabinovich & Richard E. Thomson

  3. Russian Academy of Sciences, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, 36 Nakhimovsky Prosp., Moscow, 117997, Russia

    Alexander B. Rabinovich

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  1. Oleg Zaytsev
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Correspondence to Alexander B. Rabinovich.

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Zaytsev, O., Rabinovich, A.B. & Thomson, R.E. A Comparative Analysis of Coastal and Open-Ocean Records of the Great Chilean Tsunamis of 2010, 2014 and 2015 off the Coast of Mexico. Pure Appl. Geophys. 173, 4139–4178 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1407-8

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