Evaluation of Intensity of Recent Seismogenic Tsunamis in the World Ocean from 2000 to 2014

Abstract

Tsunami intensity on the Soloviev–Imamura scale is one of the most important parameters for characterizing the overall size of a tsunami generated by submarine earthquakes. Consequently, this parameter is included in both global tsunami databases maintained by the National Centers for Environmental Information/World Data Service (NCEI/WDS) and the Novosibirsk Tsunami Laboratory of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics (NTL/ICMMG). S. Soloviev made the initial evaluation of the intensities of a large number of destructive historical tsunamis while compiling his two historical catalogs of tsunamis in the Pacific. The Novosibirsk Tsunami Laboratory under the Expert Tsunami Database Project made further determinations of tsunami intensity for the events after 1975. These intensities have been periodically incorporated into the NCEI/WDS tsunami database under the Global Tsunami Database Joint ICG/ITSU-IUGG/TC Project. In the on-line version of the NCEI/WDS Tsunami Database, the data on tsunami intensity are available only for the events prior to 2003. The main purpose of this paper is to extend the temporal coverage of this important parameter for characterizing tsunamigenic events to the present in order to provide researchers with more data for analyzing the temporal and spatial tsunami occurrence. However, of the 164 tsunamigenic events in the World Ocean from 2000 to the present, we could determine the intensity value for only 44 events that is less than 27 % of the total. For the rest of the events (that is, 73 %), the intensity value cannot be determined due to the lack of data on wave heights from the nearest coast. This shows that despite a great improvement in the tsunami-recording network in the Pacific and other oceanic basins during the last two decades, the data for reliable estimates of tsunami intensity are still problematic.