New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Response of New Zealand waters to the Peru tsunami of 23 June 2001

Derek G. Goring

National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd
P.O. Box 8602
Christchurch, New Zealand
email: d.goring@niwa.cri.nz

Abstract   The Peru tsunami of 23 June 2001 arrived at New Zealand’s east coast 16.5 h after generation, having travelled c. 8000 km across the Pacific Ocean. All the sea level recorders on the east coast recorded waves, but the response was highly variable, with the greatest response in Lyttelton Harbour, where the water fell by 26 cm, then rose over the next hour to peak at 30 cm. None of the recorders on the west coast felt the tsunami. The time scale of the waves was between 2 and 20 min and they persisted for more than 20 h after the first waves arrived, before starting to slowly decay. In some places, like Pegasus Bay, the tsunami excited local seiche, but these waves quickly dissipated. Analysis of data collected at 1-min intervals, instead of the standard 5-min intervals, indicated that information is lost when sampling tsunami at 5-min intervals.

Keywords   tsunami; tides; seiche; wavelets; scaling

M01059 Received 11 July 2001; accepted 24 September 2001
New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2002, Vol. 36 : 225–232
0028–8330/02/3601–0225 $7.00 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2002

PDF file of entire paper: Print-quality

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