Assessment of tsunami hazards for the Central American Pacific coast from southern Mexico to northern Peru
Central America (CA), from Guatemala to Panama, has been struck by at least 52 tsunamis between 1539 and 2013, and in the extended region from Mexico to northern Peru (denoted as ECA, Extended Central America in this paper) the number of recorded tsunamis in the same time span is more than 100, most...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2014-07-01
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| Series: | Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences |
| Online Access: | http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/14/1889/2014/nhess-14-1889-2014.pdf |
| Summary: | Central America (CA), from Guatemala to Panama, has been struck by at least
52 tsunamis between 1539 and 2013, and in the extended region from Mexico to
northern Peru (denoted as ECA, Extended Central America in this paper) the
number of recorded tsunamis in the same time span is more than 100, most of
which were triggered by earthquakes located in the Middle American Trench
that runs parallel to the Pacific coast. The most severe event in the
catalogue is the tsunami that occurred on 2 September 1992 off Nicaragua,
with run-up measured in the range of 5–10 m in several places along the
Nicaraguan coast. The aim of this paper is to assess the tsunami hazard on
the Pacific coast of this extended region, and to this purpose a hybrid
probabilistic-deterministic analysis is performed, that is adequate for
tsunamis generated by earthquakes. More specifically, the probabilistic
approach is used to compute the Gutenberg–Richter coefficients of the main
seismic tsunamigenic zones of the area and to estimate the annual rate of
occurrence of tsunamigenic earthquakes and their corresponding return period.
The output of the probabilistic part of the method is taken as input by the
deterministic part, which is applied to calculate the tsunami run-up
distribution along the coast. |
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| ISSN: | 1561-8633 1684-9981 |