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Abstract.
We examine the origin and behavior of
the catastrophic tsunami that impacted Skagway Harbor at the head of Taiya Inlet, Alaska, on November
3, 1994. Geomorphologicand tide gauge data, com-
secondary effect of this "offshore" slide. The main arguments for the alternative generation mechanism are
that the wavesappear to be too large to have been probined with numerical simulation of the event, reveal duced by the dock collapse and associated submarine
that the tsunami was generated by an underwater land- slide and that the spatial scales of the collapsed dock
slide formed during the collapseof a cruise-ship dock were too small to account for the observed3-min period
undergoing construction. Use of a fine-grid model for and 1-h duration of the observed oscillations.
SkagwayHarbor and a coarse-gridmodel for Taiya Inlet
The purpose of this paper is to examine the 1994
enables us to explain many of the eyewitness accounts SkagwayHarbor event in the context of landslide-generand to reproduce the dominant oscillations in the tide ated tsunamis in steep coastal fjords and to show that
gaugerecord, includingthe persistent(,- 1 h) 3-min all aspects of the tsunami waves are readily explained
oscillation in Skagway Harbor. The occurrenceof the by the dock failure and subsequentsubmarine slide.
landslide is linked to critical overloading of the slope
materials
at a time
of extreme
low tide.
Introduction
59*
27'30"
$21
59
27'00"
Tide Gauge
PARN
T a i y a f
Inlet
Dock/
Slide
Area
%% i09mf
59*
26'30"
0.5
km
/
the limit
of the harbor
model
domain.
Inset
shows the
3010
RABINOVICH
ET AL.- LANDSLIDE-GENERATED
TSUNAMI
8(m)
iscc
-2
-4
! sc
IOscc
10scc
50sec
Simulation
with
full slide-wave
interactions
of the total slide volume. The localizedSkagwayHarbor model coversa 260 x 160 grid having grid steps
(crest),in agreement
with thetidegaugerecord(cf. Kulikove! al. [1996];Lander[1996]),and with the results
of the laboratorymodelingby Raichlenet al. [1996].In
contrast, the hypothetical massiveslide in Taiya Inlet
RABINOVICH
ET AL'
LANDSLIDE-GENERATED
TSUNAMI
1.0
northern half of Taiya Inlet (Fig. 1, inset). The extended model has grid dimensions763 x 311, grid steps
Ax = Ay = 10 m and time step At = 0.0385 s. Two
different
initial
source domains
3011
104
95%
,o102
,,
ed- S'm
lat
u
{no'adjustment)
\..,'11
lu .........
Simulated
(adjusted
for3/4turn)
I
. i . ,.1
Frequency (cpm)
extendedTaiya Inlet model: (1) The rectangularslide Figure 5. Spectra of observedand simulated tsunami
used in the previous section for the Skagway Harbor
domain,and (2) a morerealisticslidedomainbasedon mittance function for the tide gaugewith 3/4-turn valve
data from Terra Surveys(Fig. 2). The slidevolumes opening(from Raichlenet al. [1996]).
bubbler tide gauge of the type used in Skagway. Results show that the dynamic responseof the gauge is
a function of the needle valve opening located at the
end of a gas-filled tube. We used the calibration curve
(tide
gauge
record)
i
_(b)
Simulated
(no adjustment)
Adjustment of the simulated waveseffectively suppresses the high-frequencyoscillationsexcept at the beginning of the record. For the actual tide gauge record,
high-frequencyoscillationsat the leading edge of the
tsunami would have been damped by the non-linear
gauge-responseeffects.
An encouraging feature of our model is the close
agreementbetweenthe correctedsealevelrecords(Fig.
4c) and the observedsea level record(Fig. 4a). The
fundamental observedperiod of 3.0 min agreeswell with
_(c)
Simulated
(adjustedfor 3/4 turn)
-1
19
20
harbor motions;Q = r/ST, where5 is the decaycoefficient and T is the wave period. The estimated Q values
for the dominant oscillationswere large for model and
observations
(Fig. 6). Specifically,
Q = 24, 5 m 2.7 h-
for the observedwavesand Q 21, 5 m 3.0 h- for
the simulated waves,suggestingthat wave energy leaks
slowly from Skagway Harbor into Taiya Inlet. The
3012
RABINOVICH
ET AL.: LANDSLIDE-GENERATED
TSUNAMI
1= 2.7hr'1 I
150
r]l,'[3
Q=
24I X&
=
hr"l
Q=3.0
21
[
0/
20
in Skagway Harbor accounts for all aspects of the observed wave field without any additional assumptions
concerning simultaneous, hypothetical geophysical or
hydrometeorologicalevents in the adjoining inlet.
References
igure
basedon successive
creststo troughs (triangles) and
troughsto crests(squares).The fitted exponentialfunctions approximate the wave height decay.
and B. D. Bornhold, Numerical modelling of landslidegenerated tsunamis with application to the SkagwayHarbor tsunami of November 3, 1994, Proc. Tsunarni Syrnp.,
Paris, 1998.
Jiang, L., and P. H. LeBlond, Three-dimensional modeling
of tsunami generation due to a submarine mudslide, J.
and
Conclusions
which require that a wave trough arrive first. To ex- of Ocean Sciences,9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC,
plain this contradiction,Nottingham[1997]arguesthat VSL 4B2, Canada.
a suddenatmosphericpressuredrop of 67 mb occurred
seconds before the arrival of the tsunami event. Not
(ReceivedApril 9, 1999;acceptedJune24, 1999.)