The 1867 Virgin Island Tsunami

Zahibo, N.; Pelinovsky, E.; Yalciner, A. C.; Kurkin, A.; Koselkov, A.; Zaitsev, A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-3-367-2003

Articles | Volume 3, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-3-367-2003

© Author(s) 2003. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Special issue:

Tsunamis

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-3-367-2003

© Author(s) 2003. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Articles | Volume 3, issue 5

31 Oct 2003

| 31 Oct 2003

The 1867 Virgin Island Tsunami

N. Zahibo, E. Pelinovsky, A. C. Yalciner, A. Kurkin, A. Koselkov, and A. Zaitsev

Abstract. The 1867 Virgin Island Tsunami reached large magnitude on the coasts of the Caribbean Islands. A maximum tsunami height of 10 m was reported for two coastal locations (Deshaies and Sainte-Rose) in Guadeloupe. Modelling of the 1867 tsunami is performed in the framework of the nonlinear shallow-water theory. The directivity of the tsunami wave source in the Caribbean Sea according to the assumed initial waveform is investigated. The tsunami records at the several coastal regions in the Lesser Antilles, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and South America are simulated. The comparison between the computed and observed data is in reasonable agreement.