Subject: What's new on the tsunami front?

From: Michael Strauss

Submitted: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:10:40 -0500 (EST)

Message number: 34 (previous: 33, next: 35 up: Index)

Hello all,
  We discussed the physics of tsunami propagation at the last LSST SWG
meeting, and a recent talk by Jay Melosh was quoted, saying that the
dangers of these events has been overestimated.  I just finished
reading the papers by Hills and Mader, and by Ward and Asphaug; I
would very much like to understand what, if anything, they did
incorrectly in their calculations.  Ward and Asphaug use simple energy
arguments to predict the size of water waves from an impact, and
propagate them with linear theory (and thus no run-up when the wave
hits the continental shelf).  Hills and Mader use empirical data
from what I understood to be nuclear tests to come to similar
conclusions, but push this further to estimate the effects of run-up
and breaking; they claim that historical tsunamis show an increase of
height of a factor 10-25 from the deep-water tsunami.  

  The statement at the SWG meeting was that Melosh claims that the
propagation of relatively short-wavelength waves from an impact is
qualitatively different from these.  I poked a bit around on the web,
and wasn't able to find anything by him on this subject.  This is of
tremendous importance; does anyone have suggestions on how we can gain
further understanding of this?  Would it make sense to write to Melosh
directly? 

					Thanks,  Michael

LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST    Mailing List Server   LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST
LSST
LSST  This is message 34 in the lsst-general archive, URL
LSST         http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/msg.34.html
LSST         http://www.astro.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/LSSTmailinglists.pl/show_subscription?list=lsst-general
LSST  The index is at http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~dss/LSST/lsst-general/INDEX.html
LSST  To join/leave the list, send mail to lsst-request@astro.princeton.edu
LSST  To post a message, mail it to lsst-general@astro.princeton.edu
LSST
LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST LSST