From an open ocean detector to a coastal site: directly, immediately, accurately...


  • Forecast Demo (QuickTime movie)
  • Commentary to the Demo:

    03/11/2011 Tohoku tsunami measurements at DART station 46402 are used to deduce the wave time histories at further away DARTs (46403, 46409, 46410), and at coastal sites in Eastern Alaska (Seward, Yakutat, Elfin Cove, and Sitka) 3+ hrs before the tsunami arrival, with a trivial computation which can be performed almost instantaneously (no tsunami simulation is used for the forecast).

    Plot legend: red - forecast deduced from the measurements of the approaching tsunami at station 46402, dark gray - tsunami measurements (de-tided).

    Check-it-yourself:

  • Create your own numerical tsunami offshore Kuril or Japan, and propagate it to Alaska
  • Save time-histories at the four DARTs
  • Get Responses of stations 46403, 46409, 46410 to 46402, and forecast scripts (Matlab/Octave) here
  • Predict the DARTs to the East with the computed time-history at 46402, and the provided scripts and Responses
  • Compare the predictions with the direct computations (expect better results for a tsunami originating closer to the Tohoku EQ)
  • DARTs' locations (lon,lat) as on 2011/03/11 are
    46402: 195.995 E, 51.068 N 46403: 203.079 E, 52.649 N 46409: 211.508 E, 55.300 N 46410: 216.200 E, 57.617 N

    References:

    Dmitry Nicolsky, Elena Tolkova, Elena Suleimani. No-source tsunami forecasting for Alaska communities,
    Abstract NH13A-3722,  AGU Fall Meeting, 2014      View Poster

    W. Power and E. Tolkova. Forecasting tsunamis in Poverty Bay, New Zealand, with deep-ocean gauges.
    doi: 10.1007/s10236-013-0665-6
    Forecasting California with DART 46408

    Forecasting North America with DART 32412 (off Peru)