You know what you probably missed? One of the largest tsunamis ever recorded happened in Greenland on June 17th. According to Nature, the mega-tsunami was over 300-feet-high and devastated a remote Greenlandic community called Nuugaatsiaq. Four people are presumed dead, 11 houses were washed away, and the tiny village was rocked to its core. Mega-tsunamis occur when large object–like, very large–lands in a body of water.
Unlike many tsunamis, though, it wasn’t caused by an earthquake. Instead, it was a landslide of enormous porportions–so big, in fact, that it registered at 4.1 on the Richter scale. “Seismologists returning from studying the rare event hope that the data they have collected will improve models of landslide mechanics in glacial areas and provide a better understanding of the associated tsunami risks,” wrote Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. “They warn that such events could become more frequent as the climate warms.”
Tsunamis, as you probably know, are just a massive example of water displacement. In the case of earthquake-triggered tsunamis, one side of the fault slips downwards. All that water has to go somewhere, and if they make landfall, are one of Mother Nature’s most destructive forces.
Strangely, though, so-called mega-tsunamis are generally far less damaging than ones caused by earthquakes. That’s because the surge usually remains localized. Still, though, the height of a mega-tsunami is terrifying.
“Landslide-generated tsunamis are much more locally limited than tsunamis produced by sea quakes, but they can be massively tall and devastating in the vicinity,” says Hermann Fritz, an environmental engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
One of the most frightening examples happened in 1792 in Japan. In that case, Mount Unzen blew its top and the entire southern portion slid into the sea. The resulting mega-tsunami is thought to have killed upwards of 15,000 people.
The research team that traveled to the site in Greenland to figure out what happened determined that a slab of rock dropped over 3,000 feet into the fjord below. The resulting wave ran along the coastline at a height of almost 300 feet, but lost its energy when it ran into a deeper section. Although it was significantly weakened, it still had enough energy to send water 200+ feet up the hillside on the other side of the fjord and ruin much of Nuugaatsiaq.
Thankfully for the residents of Nuugaatsiaq, the Greenland mega-tsunami lost much of its energy before it made landfall on their doorsteps.
Image: Nature
