Importance of large-scale bathymetry features on 2011 Tohoku tsunami waveforms through comparison of simulations with the spatially dense ALBACORE OBS array data

In March 2011, a deployment of ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs) off the coast of Southern California recorded the tsunami resulting from the Mw=9.0 Tohoku, Japan earthquake with very high spatial resolution. The ALBACORE (Asthenosphere and Lithosphere Broadband Architecture from the California Offshore Region Experiment) OBS array spanned a region that was 150 km north-south by 400 km east-west, extending into deep open ocean west of the Patton escarpment. In that array, 22 stations with a spacing of 75 km had differential pressure gauges (DPGs) that recorded water pressure waveform data continuously at 50 samples/second. The DPG tsunami records across the entire array show multiple large-amplitude, coherent phases arriving one hour to more than 36 hours after the initial tsunami phase. To determine the source of the large-amplitude coherent phases, gravity ocean wave propagation calculations were carried out for the Pacific Ocean. Simulated pressure waveforms were compared with data for the ALBACORE stations, as well as for the NOAA DART buoys. The linear, non-dispersive shallow-water simulations include bottom frictional effects, and use the USGS NEIC Tohoku slip model and ETOPO2 (two-minute spatial resolution) bathymetry. The predicted travel times of the initial arrivals are found to be less than 1% different from the observed travel times in the southern California ALBACORE DPG data. In order to gauge the effects of large-scale features in Pacific Ocean bathymetry, several large-scale features were individually removed, and simulations were carried out for the modified bathymetry. The removed features include the Emperor Seamount chain, Hawaiian Islands, Oceania, French Polynesia, and the South American coastline. The results show that the removal of these features has an effect on the arrival time of the phases that depends on the feature proximity to the direct path, but their removal does not have a significant effect on the frequency content or phase amplitudes of the waves. The direct paths recorded in Southern California indicate that the tsunami wave did not interfere with distant above-water features such as the Aleutians, but was diffracted around Point Conception in the California coastline and around southern California islands. It is more likely that the scattered phases are the result of wave reflections off the western Japan coastline, or interactions with local structures such as the central-southern California coastline, plateaus beneath the Channel Islands, and the Patton Escarpment.