Submarine landslide tsunamis: how extreme and how likely?

A number of examples are presented to substantiate that submarine landslides have occurred along most continental margins and along several volcano flanks. Their properties of importance for tsunami generation (i.e. physical dimensions, acceleration, maximum velocity, mass discharge, and travel distance) can all gain extreme values compared to their subaerial counterparts. Hence, landslide tsunamis may also be extreme and have regional impact. Landslide tsunami characteristics are discussed explaining how they may exceed tsunamis induced by megathrust earthquakes, hence representing a significant risk even though they occur more infrequently. In fact, submarine landslides may cause potentially extreme tsunami run-up heights, which may have consequences for the design of critical infrastructure often based on unjustifiably long return periods. Giant submarine landslides are rare and related to climate changes or glacial cycles, indicating that giant submarine landslide tsunami hazard is in most regions negligible compared to earthquake tsunami hazard. Large-scale debris flows surrounding active volcanoes or submarine landslides in river deltas may be more frequent. Giant volcano flank collapses at the Canary and Hawaii Islands developed in the early stages of the history of the volcanoes, and the tsunamigenic potential of these collapses is disputed. Estimations of recurrence intervals, hazard, and uncertainties with today’s methods are discussed. It is concluded that insufficient sampling and changing conditions for landslide release are major obstacles in transporting a Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment (PTHA) approach from earthquake to landslide tsunamis and that the more robust Scenario-Based Tsunami Hazard Assessment (SBTHA) approach will still be most efficient to use. Finally, the needs for data acquisition and analyses, laboratory experiments, and more sophisticated numerical modelling for improved understanding and hazard assessment of landslide tsunamis are elaborated. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014