José C. Borrero - Böcker

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake generated a tsunami that caused severe damage including 20,000 casualties in Japan. The tsunami also affected other Pacific coasts, including the Kuril Islands, the USA, French Polynesia, the Galapagos Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. This volume contains an introduction and 21papers, mostly presented at the 25th International Tsunami Symposium held 1-4 July 2011, only four months after the tsunami. They report seismological aspects of the event related to the tsunami warning, the tsunami impacts and effects in Japan and around the Pacific, analyses of instrumental tsunami data and modelling.

The 2010 tsunamis generated in Haiti, Chile, and Indonesia caused various damage on the coasts. In the past, the 1755 Lisbon, 1964 Alaska, and 2003 Algeria earthquakes also generated damaging tsunamis. This volume contains an introduction and 18 papers, mostly presented at the 25th International Tsunami Symposium held 1-4 July 2011. They report the above tsunamis and discuss tsunami DART observations, warning systems, risk management in the Pacific, modelling of earthquake and landslide tsunamis, and probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment.

The 2011 Tohoku earthquake generated a catastrophic tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people along the coast of Japan and caused the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The tsunami propagated throughout the Pacific Ocean and also affected many other countries, including Russia, the USA, New Zealand, French Polynesia and Chile, demonstrating once again the terrible threat that tsunami waves pose for Pacific countries and the need for basin-wide international scientific collaboration.Following a brief introduction, this volume presents 21 scientific papers, including 12 on aspects of the 2011 Tohoku event. A first group of papers provides detailed field survey results from the coasts of Japan and Russia and examines the wave dynamics on the basis of these surveys, the source mechanism of the earthquake, and the far-field impacts of the Tohoku tsunami. The second group reports on the 2012 tsunamis in El Salvador, the Philippines, off the east coast of Honshu and the landmark Haida Gwaii event off the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, while the papers in a third set discuss a number of remaining challenging questions in tsunami science and warning. The volume will be of interest to scientists and practitioners involved in all aspects of tsunamis from earthquake source processes to transoceanic wave propagation and coastal impacts. Postgraduate students in geophysics, oceanography and coastal engineering – as well as those in the broader geosciences, civil and environmental engineering – will also find the book a valuable resource, as it combines recent case studies with the latest advances in tsunami science and natural hazards mitigation.

This is the first volume of a collection of essays focusing on progress in tsunami science since the great tsunami of 26 December. A magnitude Mw 9.1 earthquake (third strongest ever instrumentally recorded) generated a global tsunami that killed about 230,000 people along the coasts of 14 countries in the Indian Ocean and propagated as far as the North Pacific and North Atlantic.Since then, various countries from around the globe contributed major funding to tsunami research and mitigation, enabling the installation of hundreds of new high-precision instruments, the development of new technology and the establishment of more modern communication systems. As a result, incredible progress has been achieved in tsunami research and operation during the ten years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.The papers presented in this first of two special volumes of Pure and Applied Geophysics reflect the state of tsunami science during this time. Eight papers are related to casestudies highlighting regional hazards around the globe, while five papers record progress in tsunami warning systems. Benchmark studies that describe the accuracy of numerical models for tsunami impact, as well as a variety of inundation and generation studies, are presented by 7 additional papers.