题 目：Meteotsunamis in the Great Lakes and Beyond: An Overlook Hazard
报告人：Chin H. Wu, Ph.D.
Professor,Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Director,Environmental/Ecological Fluid Mechanics and Coastal Sustainability Lab
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA
时 间：2017年3月23日（周四）上午9：00
地 点：严恺馆502会议室
报告简介：Meteotsunamis are meteorologically generated water waves that have temporal and spatial characteristics similar to seismic tsunamis and can pose serious hazards to coastal communities. Meteotsunami waves, which have typical periods from 2 mins to 2 hours, have caused disastrous effects to property and life along coasts worldwide due to their significant runup and strong associated currents. In this talk, we quantify meteotsunamis in terms of seasonality, causes, and occurrence frequency through the analysis of long-term water level records in the Laurentian Great Lakes. It is found that the majority of observed meteotsunamis happen from late-spring to mid-summer and are associated primarily with convective storms. Meteotsunami events of potentially dangerous magnitude (height > 0.3m) occur an average of 106 times per year throughout the region. These results reveal that meteotsunamis are much more frequent than follow from historic anecdotal reports. Future climate scenarios over the United States show a likely increase in the number of days favorable to severe convective storm formation over the Great Lakes, particularly in the spring season. This would suggest that the convectively associated meteotsunamis in these regions may experience an increase in occurrence frequency or a temporal shift in occurrence to earlier in the warm season. At last, we will examine the spatial and temporal patterns of destructive meteotsunamis worldwide from the past century. To date, meteotsunamis in the world have been an overlooked hazard!
