Lecture: Recent Advances on Understanding Tsunamis
Speaker:
Date and Time
19:30 -
Location
Virtual Talk via Zoom
Lecture Description
Over the past twenty years devastating tsunamis have struck Papua New Guinea (submarine landslide 1998), the Indian Ocean (Earthquake 2004) and Japan (earthquake and submarine landslide 2011), with over 250,000 fatalities. During this period, there have also been tsunamis generated from volcanic collapse (Anak Krakatau, 2018) and eruption (Hunga Tonga, 2022), and strike slip faulting and coastal landslides (Sulawesi, 2018). These events have resulted in a greater awareness of tsunami hazard and risk based on major research programmes aimed at better understanding the underlying generation mechanisms and their geographical spread.
Earthquakes have been recognised as a tsunami mechanism since the 5th century BC, but fundamental understanding of these and other mechanisms remained limited until the late 20th century. The number of fatalities has driven the research programmes which have been based on technological advances made mainly over the past 50 years such as Multibeam Echosounders.
In this talk, the development of ideas and understanding of tsunami mechanisms taking place over the recent past is presented and discussed. The catalyst has been the devastating events identified above which have led to the major advances in understanding, especially with regard to non-seismic tsunami mechanisms, such as landslides and volcanic eruptions. Without the recently developed technology, such as MBES mapping of the seabed and sub-seabed and the manipulation of large data volumes by high-speed computers, these advances would not have been possible.
About the Speaker: Professor Dave Tappin has worked for the British Geological Survey since the late 1970s and is also a visiting Professor at the University of London. He has worked in all of the major ocean basins of the world and lived in the Pacific (Tonga) for a five-year spell in the early – mid 1980s. For the past 20+ 2 years his research has focussed on tsunamis initially on submarine landslides and volcanic collapse and more recently on the Indonesian tsunamis in 2018 (Sulawesi and Sunda Straits) and the Tonga eruption of 2022.