The Large Greenland Landslide of 2017: Was a Tsunami Warning Possible?

Tsunamis generated by mass movements such as landslides, underwater slumps, and rock avalanches can lead to serious inundation of nearby populated areas. The lack of timely estimations of the moving mass volume, however, makes providing operational early warnings for landslides particularly challeng...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Seismological Research Letters
Main Authors: Chao, Wei-An, Wu, Tso-Ren, Ma, Kuo-Fong, Kuo, Yu-Ting, Wu, Yih-Min, Zhao, Li, Chung, Meng-Ju, Wu, Han, Tsai, Yu-Lin
Other Authors: 土木工程學系, Department of Civil Engineering
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Greenland
Nuugaatsiaq
Ice Sheet
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11536/147944
https://doi.org/10.1785/0220170160
Description
Summary:Tsunamis generated by mass movements such as landslides, underwater slumps, and rock avalanches can lead to serious inundation of nearby populated areas. The lack of timely estimations of the moving mass volume, however, makes providing operational early warnings for landslides particularly challenging. In June 2017, a large landslide in Greenland generated tsunami waves of about 1 m high that impacted the small town of Nuugaatsiaq. We show how the seismic analysis of real-time seismic records from the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network (GLISN) can provide estimates of essential physical properties of the landslide such as collapse mass and sliding velocity shortly after origin time. The estimation of the landslide source parameters can be utilized for tsunami-wave simulations. We demonstrate how the real-time integration of seismic waveform inversion with forward tsunami-wave simulation could have enabled a timely operational warning (about 10 min) before the arrival of the impending tsunami waves at the village of Nuugaatsiaq.

Similar Items