Effect of global sea level rise over the near, intermediate and long-term on tsunami waves at the Victoria coast guard station in southwestern British Columbia / Richard Thomson, Alexander Rabinovich,...: Fs97-18/362E-PDF

"The coast of British Columbia is susceptible to flooding and strong currents from trans-oceanic tsunamis. Global sea level rise and vertical tectonic land motions further compound the effects of future tsunamigenic events. The present study centres on the Victoria Coast Guard Station in Victoria Harbour. We examine historical tsunamis observed at this site and the results of numerical modelling of the two potentially most dangerous Victoria region tsunamis – a 1964-type Alaska and a 1700-type Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) tsunami – and estimate the risk for the region taking into account vertical tectonic motion and climatic sea level change. Of the 39 tsunamis recorded at Victoria between 1910 and 2021, only the 1964 magnitude 9.2 event generated tsunami waves that were hazardous to the Victoria area (maximum wave amplitude, 70 cm). Centuries earlier, the magnitude 9.0 CSZ earthquake of 26 January 1700 generated a trans-oceanic tsunami that also strongly affected the British Columbia coast. Such an event is likely to occur again sometime in the next 500 to 700 years. Based on reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James et al. [2015; 2021] and Lemmen et al. [2016] examined sea level rise in western Canada that takes into account both climatic effects and vertical tectonic motions for low, moderate and high global sea level rise scenarios. These findings enabled us to estimate the effect that sea-level changes will have on future tsunamis impacting the entire British Columbia coast. Detailed results focus on Victoria Harbour in the southwest corner of the province"--Abstract, page iv.

Permanent link to this Catalogue record:
publications.gc.ca/pub?id=9.928934&sl=0

• MARC XML format
• MARC HTML format

Request alternate formats