Regional tsunami hazard from splay faults in the Gulf of Oman

Abstract

The present study evaluates the tsunami hazard from splay thrust and normal faults in the western Makran, Gulf of Oman for the first time. We interpret splay thrust and normal faults in the Gulf of Oman using reflection seismic data and analyze the implied regional deterministic and probabilistic tsunami hazards. The tsunami hazards associated with splay thrust and more specifically normal faults in Makran have not been well understood before. Our results indicate the need to pay much more attention to hazards from splay thrust and normal faults in the Makran subduction zone. The highest tsunami waves impact Jask and Muscat. The results of inundation modeling show the high power of generated tsunami waves to penetrate inland. Our tsunami hazard deaggregation analysis indicates an unusual large contribution from normal faults to the local tsunami hazard. We find out that the probability that tsunami wave height exceeds 1m and 3m in 250 years reach 1 and 0.8 in the Gulf of Oman Basin.