Tsunamis are powerful waves caused by sudden disturbances in the ocean, capable of inflicting widespread damage along coastlines. A study uses the ADCIRC model on an unstructured global grid to model tsunamis in the world’s oceans.
A team of Indian researchers tested a new approach that could identify danger points in real time. They used a real-time shallow-water model, which subdivides the seabed into smaller segments to compute a tsunami’s behavior, and applied it at a global scale using chunks of up to 20 km in the deep ocean and finer resolutions of 2 km in shallow seas, where tsunami waves become more complex.
Thus, they modeled five historical tsunamis using data about the earthquakes that triggered them, finding a good correspondence between the modeled wave heights at different locations and the real measurements from tide gauges. The researchers state that, although more work remains, these simulations can be used in real time to identify dangerous coastal zones during a global tsunami.
The results show that ADCIRC accurately forecasts the heights of tsunami waves and coastal impacts, making it suitable for real-time tsunami warnings and improving preparedness for future events. This study contributes to the real-time application of ADCIRC at ITEWC to calculate tsunamis in the global oceans and assess their impact on the Indian coasts.
