Articles | Volume 23, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-107-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-107-2023
Research article
 | 
31 Jan 2023
Research article |  | 31 Jan 2023

Observations of extreme wave runup events on the US Pacific Northwest coast

Chuan Li, H. Tuba Özkan-Haller, Gabriel García Medina, Robert A. Holman, Peter Ruggiero, Treena M. Jensen, David B. Elson, and William R. Schneider

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Cited articles

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Battjes, J. A. and Janssen, J. P. F. M.: Energy loss and set-up due to breaking of random waves, Proc. of the 16th Intern. Conf. on Coastal Eng., Reston, Va, 27 August–3 September 1978, ASCE, 569–587, https://doi.org/10.9753/icce.v16.32, 1978. a
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In this work, we examine a set of observed extreme, non-earthquake-related and non-landslide-related wave runup events. Runup events with similar characteristics have previously been attributed to trapped waves, atmospheric disturbances, and abrupt breaking of long waves. However, we find that none of these mechanisms were likely at work in the observations we examined. We show that instead, these runup events were more likely due to energetic growth of bound infragravity waves.
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