Tsunami Hazard Along Coastlines of China: a Re-Examination of Historical Data

Abstract eng:
The 2004 South Asia tsunami alerted most of us that tsunami hazard cannot be ignored along any coastline. In other words, no coastline is absolutely immune from tsunami hazard. For unknown reasons, tsunami hazards in China have largely been underestimated. According to the published literatures and the official press release from the State Oceanic Administration of China (SOAC), the official record of tsunami occurred in China is about 15 or less over the last 2000 years or so. A preliminary study by the author, based on a book entitled “Historical Tsunami and Related Events in China” published in 1984 by the Ocean Press (Lu, 1984), reveals that there are, however, about 220 tsunami events that are of unknown origin in the last 2000 years (no storms, earthquakes, or rains were reported during these events). Clearly, a lot of historical records reported in this valuable book has been overlooked or ignored by previous authors (e.g. Mak and Chan, 2007) and by SOAC. A major misconception seems that tsunami phenomena cannot be directly related to earthquake has been ignored. This is incorrect, since it is well accepted that tsunami can be induced by landslide, submarine landslide, meteor impact, volcanic eruption, and seafloor collapse. The focus of this study is to present some of these events in a systematic manner. To mention some notable events compiled in the book by Lu (1984), tsunami occurred in 1045, 1329, 1458, 1536, 1776 and 1782 are all led to a fatality of 10000 or more.

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