Going high-res and to the deep to bridge the earthquake-tsunami gap

CIRES scientists hooked more than they bargained for when they pulled deep-sea pressure gauges and seismometers from the waters off New Zealand. The instruments were originally put in place to map the Alpine Fault. But during the year they were deployed, the dense network of sensors also recorded signals for five tsunami-generating earthquakes, providing a resolution of data that could help CIRES scientists Anne Sheehan, Zhaohui Yang, and George Mungrov, and NOAA’s Kelly Stroker come to grips with the physical nature of waves produced by ocean rumbles. The data will help bridge the earthquake to tsunami gap, which could help tsunami warning systems more accurately model the size of waves as they approach landfall.