HR: 1340h
AN: S53A-1016    [Abstracts]
TI: Potential Hazards of Tsunami Waves along the Chinese coast in the next 100 years
AU: * Liu, Y
EM: spring.yingch@gmail.com
AF: South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, 164 Xi Xingang Road, Guangzhou, 510301, China
AU: Yuen, D A
EM: daveyuen@gmail.com
AF: Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Sevre, E O
EM: esevre@gmail.com
AF: Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States
AU: Shi, Y
EM: shiyl@gucas.ac.cn
AF: Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Science, 19 a Yue Quan Lu, Beijing, 100049, China
AB: In the next 100 years the Chinese coast faces potentially non-negligible danger from tsunamogenic earthquakes originating at the neighboring subducting plate boundaries in the Phillipines and the Ryukyu Islands. There are significant differences in the bottom bathymetry between the South China Sea bordering the southern province of Guangdong and the East China Sea and Yellow Sea adjacent to the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong. We have found that the linear shallow-water equations can be used to predict with good enough accuracy the travel time of tsunami waves in the South China Sea, but the nonlinear shallow-water equations must be used for the shallower seas next to the northern Chinese provinces. There are some differences in the travel time predictions between the linear and nonlinear theories for the Yellow Sea region. This difference is enough to make a difference in terms of warning. We will use our newly developed probability method, called the probabilistic forecast of tsunami hazards ( PFTH ) for predicting the danger of tsunami waves with a certain height of around 2 meters to impinge on the cities along the Chinese coast in the next century.We have used the Gutenberg-Richter relationship applied locally to each locale for evaluating the probability of the seismic risk for large earthquakes, greater than magnitude 7. We have only included the frequency of shallow large earthquakes to take place . For the southern cities of Hong Kong and Macau, we found that the probability of a 2 meter wave to hit these ports is around 10 % in the next century. Cities in Taiwan are less vulnerable than the large coastal cities on the Chinese mainland. The probability results for the northern cities of Shanghai and Qingdao are around a few per cent for smaller wave heights like one meter or so. But even these smaller waves can be damaging --
DE: 4564 Tsunamis and storm surges
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting