The role of diffraction effects in extreme runup inundation at Okushiri Island due to 1993 tsunami

Abstract

Abstract. The tsunami generated on 12 July 1993 by Hokkaido-Nansei-Oki earthquake (Mw = 7.8) has brought about the maximum wave run-up of 31.7 m, the highest record in Japan of 20th century, near the Monai Valley on the west coast of the Okushiri island (Hokkaido Tsunami Survey Group, 1993). To reproduce the extreme run-up height the three-dimensional non-hydrostatic model (Flow Science, 2012) denoted by NH-model has been locally applied with open boundary conditions supplied in an offline manner by the three-dimensional hydrostatic model (Ribeiro et al., 2011) denoted by H-model which is sufficiently large to cover the entire fault region with one-way nested multiple domains. For the initial water deformation Okada's fault model (1985) using the 3 sub-fault parameters is applied. Three non-hydrostatic model experiments have been performed, namely experiment without island, with one island and with two islands. The experiments with one island and with two islands give rise to values close to the observation with maximum run-up heights of about 32.3 and 30.8 m, respectively, while the experiment without islands gives rise to about 25.2 m. The diffraction of tsunami wave primarily by Muen Island located at the South and the southward topographic guiding of tsunami run-up at the coast are as in the laboratory simulation (Yoneyama et al., 2002) found to result in the extreme run-up height near the Monai Valley. The presence of Hira Island enhances the diffraction of tsunami waves but its contribution to the extreme run-up height is marginal.