Field Survey of the Peruvian Tsunami of June 23, 2001

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

This action is to support a field survey of the effects of the tsunami generated by the Southern Peru earthquake of 23 June 2001. The survey involves a 9-person team for a total of nine days in the area impacted by the tsunami. The objective is to gather a coherent database of runup and inundation measurements, to be used later in computer modeling efforts aimed at unraveling the exact mechanism of generation of this tsunami. Preliminary reports indicate that a tsunami was generated and recorded as far away as Japan. Locally, reports indicate a series of five waves (with periods on the order of half-an-hour) destroying built-up structures and inundating as far as 1.5 to 2 km inland in the area of Camana. This survey represents a continuation of the work carried out for the past decade in the aftermath of significant tsunamis worldwide, in order to gather coherent, quantitative sets of modern data which can then become the basis for modeling the source of the tsunami through state-of-the-art computational techniques. For past tsunamis, the comparison between simulations for a variety of sources of the tsunami and the surveyed dataset has provided fundamental and occasionally unexpected insight into the dynamics of the ocean floor during, or immediately following, an earthquake in the marine environment. The information from this survey, as with previous surveys, will be distributed worldwide via the tsunami Internet bulletin board.