Recent Worldwide Tsunamis (2020-2023) - Comparisons Between Modeling and Measurements

Abstract

Few high magnitude earthquakes were generated worldwide in the last three and a half years, some of which triggered tsunami waves. We took into account all the events during the interval January 2020 - June 2023. There was a total of 15 earthquakes (5 in 2020, 5 in 2021, 2 in 2022, 2 in 2023) which lead to moderate and/or small tsunami waves (above 0.1 m), having magnitudes higher than 7, but also one earthquake with magnitude below 7 (6.8) which lead to very small tsunami waves generation. Not all the high magnitude earthquakes resulted in tsunami waves, depending on the depth, focal mechanism and / or other parameters (distance to shore, local conditions, etc.). From tsunami measurements point of view, we considered the most relevant ones and studied only the events that lead to measured waves higher than 0.5 m. The most significant ones are 5 events: 23rd of June 2020 (15:29 UTC), Near Coast of Oaxaca Mexico, M7.4 (maximum waves 0.68 m); 19th of October 2020 (20:55 UTC) South of Alaska M7.4 (maximum waves 0.76 m); 10th of February 2021 (13:20 UTC) Southeast of Loyalty Island, M7.7 (maximum waves 0.78 m); 4th of March 2021 (19:28 UTC) Kermadec Island region, M8.1 (maximum waves 0.56 m) and 19th of September 2022 (18:05 UTC), Coast of Michoacan Mexico M7.6 (maximum waves 0.79 m). We compared, in this paper, the values of sea level measurements with the results of the tsunami simulations, using the parameters of each earthquake (latitude, longitude, magnitude, depth, focal mechanism). The modeling simulations were accomplished using TRIDEC Cloud software, provided by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany. When comparing the values between the two types of data (measured vs. computed), the results show that some simulations overestimate the measured values, others underestimate it. More studies are necessary for a better numerical assessment of sea level, in order to be more precise and closer to the real measurements. Future work might include using two or three different modeling software, for the same earthquake parameters, and comparing the results.