Tsunamis - Assessing the hazard for the UK and Irish coast

Richardson, S. and Musson, R. and Horsburgh, K. (2006) Tsunamis - Assessing the hazard for the UK and Irish coast. In: 41st Defra Flood and Coastal Management Conference, 4 - 6 July 2006, York, UK.

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Abstract

Following completion of the 2005 Defra commissioned study “The threat posed by tsunamis to the UK”, this study was undertaken to investigate more specific questions raised from the previous report. The original Defra study identifies four potential tsunami sources origins, and provided first estimates for wave conditions at the UK coast for tsunamigenic events of very high, high and moderate likelihood. This second study reviewed two of these source origins in more depth, the North Sea event and a Lisbon-type event, with their consequence impact compared with regard to hazard. Previously proposed source terms for a 1755 Lisbon event was assessed and three simple models considered that could be used to study the impact of a tsunamigenic earthquake of a similar size, and in a similar region to the 1755 source, on the UK and Irish coastline. The resulting sea level displacements were used as initial conditions in a numerical model to propagate the initial disturbance to nearshore. A further numerical model propagated the tsunami to the shoreline and provided estimated of water level elevations on the Southern Irish coast, the Cornish coast and in the Bristol Channel. Information regarding the tsunami magnitude at the coast was then used to assess hazard. This paper focuses on one of the hypothesised Lisbon type events, the propagation of the tsunami from source to shoreline and the consequence of an impact on the coastlines of south-west England and southern Ireland.

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