Speeding up tsunami forecasting to boost tsunami warning in Chile

Fuentes, Mauricio; Arriola, Sebastian; Riquelme, Sebastian; Delouis, Bertrand

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1297-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1297-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1297-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 6

Research article

|

28 Jun 2019

Research article |

| 28 Jun 2019

Speeding up tsunami forecasting to boost tsunami warning in Chile

Mauricio Fuentes, Sebastian Arriola, Sebastian Riquelme, and Bertrand Delouis

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Jun 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Feb 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Suggest Publication after Major Text Corrections', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Mar 2019
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Mauricio Fuentes, 11 Apr 2019
RC2: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Mar 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Mauricio Fuentes, 11 Apr 2019
RC3: 'Comments on the manuscript “Speeding up and boosting tsunami warning in Chile” by Mauricio Fuentes et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 20 Mar 2019
- AC3: 'Response to Reviewer 3', Mauricio Fuentes, 11 Apr 2019
RC4: 'referee comments', Anonymous Referee #4, 27 Mar 2019
- AC4: 'Response to Reviewer 4', Mauricio Fuentes, 11 Apr 2019
SC1: 'Value of fast propagaion modeling without complex source inversion?', Andrey Babeyko, 01 Apr 2019
- AC5: 'Response to SC1', Mauricio Fuentes, 11 Apr 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (23 Apr 2019) by Maria Ana Baptista

AR by Mauricio Fuentes on behalf of the Authors (26 Apr 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Apr 2019) by Maria Ana Baptista

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 May 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The contents of the paper and its current readability make it worthy of publication. I have, however, one additional comment, and several minor text edits listed below:

Comment:

On Page 2, Line 1, the text reads “it allows to obtain a moment tensor solution within 5 minutes”. In my opinion the authors should clarify whether they refer to an actual capability already made operational as part of the Chilean tsunami warning system, or to the not-yet-realized possibilities of the Wphase CMT method. Listing some operational examples would also help legitimize the 5 minutes claim. Such Wphase CMT processing speed might currently turn possible only in a few regions of the world, including Chile, given the higher level of instrumentation needed to achieve such results. My comment has to do with the fact that in our experience there exist a significant difference between research done in academia and the actual implementation of a method or technique as part of a robust 24/7 monitoring system. If the statement regarding the attainment of a moment tensor solution within 5 minutes applies to the Chilean tsunami warning system currently in operation, then the paper would also benefit from some clarification of whether it uses seismic, GPS data, or a combination of both.

Suggested minor text edits:

Page 2, Line 2: “...however, that tsunami heigts are…”
→ ...however, that tsunami wave heights are…

Page 2, Line 13: “...data with 15 arcsec of resolution...”
→ ...data with a 15 arcsec resolution…

Page 2, Line 23: “...determined with the scaling laws obtained by Blaser et al. (2010).”
→ ...determined by applying the scaling laws after Blaser et al. (2010).

Page 2, Line 24: “With ny = 16 the studied cases have enough resolution on the source area”.
→ After setting ny = 16 all the earthquake cases analyzed in our study have enough resolution on the source area.

Page 2, Line 30: “...as sugested in Tanioka…
→ ...as suggested by Tanioka…

Page 3, Line 10: “...in a vertical wall placed at an isobath of 100m,...”
→ ...in a vertical wall placed at the 100 m isobath,...

Page 3, Line 12: “...to obtain a quicker...”
→ ...to obtain a faster…

Page 4, Line 1: “...on the classical finite...”
→ ...on the classic finite…

Page 4, Line 4: “This is usually on the same order with the actual runup in...”
→ The resulting runup values are in the same order of the actual runups for…

Page 4, Line 10: “...have proven to be operationally...”
→ ...have proven operationally…

Page 4, Line 27: “The extension of the earthquakes...”
→ The geometry of the earthquakes’ causative falts…

Page 7, Line 10: “This makes sense since…
→ This makes sense, since…

Page 9, Line 8: “...equations to model more than 80% of the runups...”
→ ...equations. Implementation of this method allows to model more than 80% of the tsunami runups

Page 10, Line 1: “...of the runups using...”
→ ...of the tsunami runups using…

Page 5, Line 4: “...in a flow chart (Fig. 6).”
→ ...in the flowchart shown in Figure 6.

Page 5, Line 8: “...a fast runup estimation...”
→...a fast tsunami runup estimation…

Page 5, Line 9: “...time we estimate…
→ ...time we can estimate…

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (13 May 2019) by Maria Ana Baptista

AR by Mauricio Fuentes on behalf of the Authors (17 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (28 May 2019) by Maria Ana Baptista

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Short summary

This work provides a simple and fast approach to improve tsunami warning systems in the near field. A color-coded warning map is produced almost instantaneously after the seismic information is received. Time is crucial in the near-field case; for instance, the tsunami waves generated in the Chilean trench arrive at the coastline in around 10–15 min. Seismic information takes 3–5 min to be ready; thus we produce a first warning map 6 min after the earthquake origin time.