Articles | Volume 19, issue 8
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1865-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-19-1865-2019
Research article
 | 
26 Aug 2019
Research article |  | 26 Aug 2019

Impact of hurricanes Irma and Maria on the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initial tsunami warning capability for the Caribbean region

Victor Sardina, David Walsh, Kanoa Koyanagi, Stuart Weinstein, Nathan Becker, Charles McCreery, and Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade

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Cited articles

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Sardina, V., Koyanagi, K., Becker, N., Walsh, D., McCreery, C., Weinstein, S., and von Hillebrandt-Andrade, C.: Assessment of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center’s Capabilities for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands based on the Computation of Detection and Response Times Accounting for Seismic Network Topology and Data Latencies, Seismol. Res. Lett., 89, 424–431, 2018a. a
Sardina, V., Koyanagi, K., Becker, N., Walsh, D., McCreery, C., Weinstein, S., and von Hillebrandt-Andrade, C.: Evaluation of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's Performance for the Caribbean based on the Compilation and Analysis of Tsunami Messages issued between 2003 and July, 2017, Seismol. Res. Lett., 89, 416–423, 2018b. a, b
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Short summary
We quantified the impact of hurricanes Irma and Maria on the PTWC initial tsunami warning capability for the Caribbean region after accounting for hurricane-related seismic station outages. Within the eastern Caribbean region the hurricanes exacerbated outages to an astonishing 82 % of the available 76 stations. This resulted in up to 02:33 and 04:33 min added to the earthquake detection and response times, effectively knocking out PTWC's local tsunami warning capabilities in the region.
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