Characteristics of the deep sea tsunami excited offshore Japan due to the air wave from the 2022 Tonga eruption

Abstract

Abstract A large eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano in Tonga on January 15, 2022 generated air–sea coupled tsunamis observed at the ocean-bottom pressure sensor network along the Japan Trench (S-net) in Japan. Initial tsunamis from the 2022 Tonga eruption, detected by 106 ocean-bottom pressure sensors, were well modeled by an air–sea coupled tsunami simulation, with a simple atmospheric pressure pulse as sine function, having a half-wavelength of 300 km and a peak amplitude of 2 hPa. A one-dimensional air–sea coupled tsunami simulation having a simple bathymetry shows that an input atmospheric pressure pulse with a short half-wavelength of 50 km, which is shorter than the length of the ocean bottom slopes, caused an amplitude increase via the Proudman resonance effect near the deep trench. The wavefront distortion due to the separation of the air–sea coupled wave propagating with a speed of 312 m/s and tsunami propagating with that of $$\sqrt{gd}$$ gd , where g is gravity acceleration and d is the ocean depth, is also significant near the shore. In contrast, these effects are not significant for the half-wavelength of the input atmospheric pressure pulse of 300 km. These results indicate that the air–sea coupled tsunami propagating through the trench is sensitive to the wavelength of an atmospheric pressure pulse. Graphical Abstract

Keywords

• 2022 Tonga eruption
• Air–sea coupled tsunami
• Numerical simulation
• Proudman resonance