Abstract. The selection of the earthquake source used in tsunami models of 2011 Tohoku-oki affects the simulated waveform of tsunamis across the near field. Different earthquake sources, based on inversions of seismic waveforms, tsunami waveforms, and GPS data, give distinguishable patterns of simulated tsunami heights in many locations in Tohoku and at near field DART buoys. We compared 10 sources proposed by different research groups using the GeoClaw code to simulate the resulting tsunami. Several simulations accurately reproduced observations at simulation sites with high grid resolution. Many earthquake sources produced results within 20% of observations between 38° and 39°, including realistic inundation on the Sendai Plain, reflecting a common reliance on large initial seafloor uplift around 38°N (+/- 0.5°), 143.25°E (+/- 0.75°). DART data was better reproduced by sources created by inversion techniques that incorporated DART data in the inversion. Most of the earthquake sources tested at sites with high grid resolution were unable to reproduce the magnitude of runup north of 39°, indicating that an additional source of seafloor deformation, not present in most source models, is needed to explain these observations.
Journal: abstract and links ... Electronic Supplement
Preprint (revised): MacInnesEtAl_BSSATohoku_revised.pdf
Electronic Supplement Additional figures and data, some analysis scripts.
Github code repository GeoClaw simulation codes, bathymetry, sources.
The code can be cited with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10334
bibtex entry:
@article{MacInnesGusmanLeVequeTanioka2012,
Author = {B. T. MacInnes and A. R. Gusman and R. J. LeVeque and Y.
Tanioka},
Title = {Comparison of earthquake source models for the 2011 {Tohoku}
event using tsunami simulations and near field observations},
Journal = {Bull. Seis. Soc. Amer.},
Vol = {103},
Pages = {1256-1274},
Year = {2013}}
}