Excitation of basin wide modes (free oscillations) of the Pacific Ocean by the 11 March 2011 Tohoku (Japan) tsunami

The 11 March 2011 Tohoku (Japan) tsunami was a unique event in several ways. The tsunami caused 4-5 days of surface oscillations inside the Pacific Ocean. This was an indicative of long-mode excitation of the Pacific Basin. To further examine which modes of the Pacific Ocean were excited by the 2011 Tohoku (Japan) tsunami, Heidarzadeh and Satake (2013) studied the tsunami waveforms of this event from the across the Pacific Ocean. Heidarzadeh and Satake (2013) showed that long modes of the Pacific with periods up to 50 hr were excited by the 2011 Tohoku tsunami.

To see the details of the study, click here for PDF file of the paper or click here for the weblink.

 

 

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fig-basin-wide-modes-pacific-ocean-2011-Tohoku-tsunami-free-modes-free-oscillations