Near-Field Tsunami Models with Rapid Earthquake Source Inversions from Land and Ocean-Based Observations: The Potential for Forecast and Warning

Computation of predicted tsunami wave heights and runup in the regions adjacent to large earthquakes immediately after rupture initiation remains a challenging problem. Limitations of traditional seismological instrumentation in the near field which cannot be objectively employed for real-time inversions and the non-unique source inversion results are a major concern for tsunami modelers. Employing near-field seismic, GPS and wave gauge data from the Mw 9.0 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, we test the capacity of static finite fault slip models obtained from newly developed algorithms to produce reliable tsunami forecasts. First we demonstrate the ability of seismogeodetic source models determined from combined land-based GPS and strong motion seismometers to forecast near-source tsunamis in ~3 minutes after earthquake origin time (OT). We show that these models, based on land-borne sensors only tend to underestimate the tsunami but are good enough to provide a realistic first warning. We then demonstrate that rapid ingestion of offshore shallow water (100 - 1000 m) wave gauge data significantly improves the model forecasts and possible warnings. We ingest data from 2 near-source ocean-bottom pressure sensors and 6 GPS buoys into the earthquake source inversion process. Tsunami Green functions (tGFs) are generated using the GeoClaw package, a benchmarked finite volume code with adaptive mesh refinement. These tGFs are used for a joint inversion with the land-based data and substantially improve the earthquake source and tsunami forecast. Model skill is assessed by detailed comparisons of the simulation output to 2000+ tsunami runup survey measurements collected after the event. We update the source model and tsunami forecast and warning at 10 min intervals. We show that by 20 min after OT the tsunami is well-predicted with a high variance reduction to the survey data and by ~30 minutes a model that can be considered final, since little changed is observed afterwards, is achieved. This is an indirect approach to tsunami warning, it relies on automatic determination of the earthquake source prior to tsunami simulation. It is more robust than ad-hoc approaches because it relies on computation of a finite-extent centroid moment tensor to objectively determine the style of faulting and the fault plane geometry on which to launch the heterogeneous static slip inversion. Operator interaction and physical assumptions are minimal. Thus, the approach can provide the initial conditions for tsunami simulation (seafloor motion) irrespective of the type of earthquake source and relies heavily on oceanic wave gauge measurements for source determination. It reliably distinguishes among strike-slip, normal and thrust faulting events, all of which have been observed recently to occur in subduction zones and pose distinct tsunami hazards.