The Lake Michigan meteotsunamis of 1954 revisited

Meteotsunamis in the Laurentian Great Lakes

“…a 0.75 hPa change over 5 minutes) or wind speed in excess of 10 m/s, thresholds based on analysis of meteotsunamis in Lake Michigan51, which are consistent with observations worldwide525354. To account for the possibility of reflected meteotsunami waves1121, an atmospheric perturbation is considered to be related to a meteotsunami wave if it occurred within the time period required for an open-water long wave to travel across the long axis of a lake (with wave celerity based on average depth), ranging from 3 hours for Lake Ontario to 8 hours for Lake Erie. If no atmospheric perturbations occurred before the initiation of the water level oscillations within this lake-dependent time period, the wave was deemed to be not directly meteorologically generated and was removed from further analysis.…”

“…Atmospheric energy is constantly fed into the wave if the propagation speed of the atmospheric disturbance is approximately equal to the local free wave speed, which is dependent upon water depth for open-ocean long waves19 and shelf slope for coastally trapped edge waves20. Heights of meteotsunami can further increase at the coast through local mechanisms such as shoaling, shelf resonance, reflection, and harbor resonance1121222324. Owing to the ubiquity of atmospheric disturbances in pressure and wind, meteotsunamis can add to risk posed by seismic tsunamis25 or present a threat to regions which are not traditionally recognized as under risk of seismic tsunamis26.…”

“…1), possibly due to a reporting bias towards population centers. Furthermore, wave transformations such as reflection in the enclosed basins can result in a meteotsunami wave that is decoupled from the causative atmospheric disturbance1121, which not only leads to increased risk for coastal communities but can also cause misidentification of the source of these waves. As a result, a credible quantitative assessment of meteotsunami occurrence in the Great Lakes has been lacking until recently when the occurrence of meteotsunamis was quantified for the first-time using 20-year historic water level records at 10 sites around Lake Michigan28.…”

Reconstruction of a meteotsunami in Lake Erie on 27 May 2012: Roles of atmospheric conditions on hydrodynamic response in enclosed basins

“…Conversely, similar wind speeds (10-15 m/s) are deemed negligible in meteotsunami generation in the deeper Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas [Orlić et al, 2010;Renault et al, 2011;Sepić et al, 2015]. Even in regions where wind stress has been noted to be a significant driver of meteotsunamis such as the Gulf of Finland [Pellikka et al, 2014], the Western Australia coast [Pattiaratchi and Wijeratne, 2014], and Lake Michigan [Platzman, 1965;Bechle and Wu, 2014], wind speeds associated with meteotsunamis typically exceed 25 m/s. For example, when the Band 1 disturbance is applied to depths characteristic of Lake Michigan (80 m), the wind stress term is minor (<10% partition) relative to atmospheric pressure.…”

Northern Adriatic meteorological tsunamis: Assessment of their potential through ocean modeling experiments

“…(the Atlantic coast), whereas traveling air pressure disturbance was the source mechanism for the waves generated along the much deeper U.S. east shelf. On the other hand, both air pressure and wind effect are important in generation of meteotsunami waves in the Great Lakes (USA) [Bechle and Wu, 2014]. Wind effect has also been suspected to generate strong long-ocean waves in the North Sea [de Jong and Battjes, 2004], although the observed events were not successfully reproduced by the ocean model due to insufficient high-frequency meteorological observations [de Jong et al, 2003].…”