Tsunami initial profile and maximum runup through earthquake source parameters

Abstract

SUMMARY The 1992 September 1 Nicaragua tsunami manifested itself with an initial shoreline recession, resulting in a fundamental change in approach to define the initial waveform of tsunamis from a solitary wave to an N-wave. Here, we first fit N-wave profile to seafloor deformation for a large set of earthquake scenarios, assuming that the seafloor deformation resulting from an earthquake instantaneously transfers to the sea surface. Then, relating the N-wave parameters to the earthquake source parameters, we express the initial tsunami profile in terms of the earthquake source parameters. Further, we calculate the maximum tsunami runup through earthquake source parameters and test our results against field runup measurements for several events, observing good agreement.