The effect of tide level on the tsunami response of coastal harbors

Abstract

The tsunamis generated by the February 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake and the great Japan Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011 arrived at several Pacific Coast harbors when the tide levels were at low tides and persisted for several tidal cycles. Despite the significant difference in the recorded wave amplitude observed at Crescent City harbor between these two events, the energy spectrum as a function of frequency has been found to contain several spikes corresponding to the frequency range of 3 × 10-4∼10 × 10-4 Hz. This pattern in spectral density is different from several prior tsunamis observed and analyzed for Crescent City Harbor as presented by Lee, Xing and Magoon (2008). In the present study we present the reasons behind the differences in the response behavior associated with these two events. We prove that they are due to the effect of tide levels. We also show that in order to correctly decipher the resonant response characteristics to incident wave the response curves should be expressed as a function of the dimensionless wave number. The tsunami waves recorded at tide gauge station in San Diego Harbor (Southern California) are also analyzed and discussed.