National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
United States Department of Commerce


 

FY 2008

Real-time experimental forecast of the Peruvian tsunami of August 2007 for U.S. coastlines

Wei, Y., E. Bernard, L. Tang, R. Weiss, V. Titov, C. Moore, M. Spillane, M. Hopkins, and U. Kânoğlu

Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L04609, doi: 10.1029/2007GL032250 (2008)


At 23:41 UTC on 15 August 2007, an offshore earthquake of magnitude 8.0 severely damaged central Peru and generated a tsunami. Severe shaking by the earthquake collapsed buildings throughout the region and caused 514 fatalities. The tsunami resulted in three casualties and a representative maximum runup height of ~7 in the near field. The first real-time tsunami data available came from a deep-ocean tsunami detection buoy within 1 hour of tsunami generation. These tsunami data were used to produce initial experimental forecasts within 2 hours of tsunami generation. The far-field forecasts indicated that the tsunami would not flood any of the 14 U.S. communities. Comparison with real-time tide gage data showed very accurate forecasts.



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