IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v40y2007i3p503-526.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tsunami hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: strong earthquakes and tsunamis in Cyprus and the Levantine Sea

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Fokaefs
  • Gerassimos Papadopoulos

Abstract

A modern tsunami catalogue has been compiled for the region of Cyprus-Levantine Sea in which 24 certain or possible local tsunamis are listed from antiquity up to the present time, while six regional tsunamis, generated in the Hellenic arc, are documented which affected the region. Another set of 13 doubtful events not included in the catalogue are discussed. Tsunami intensities k and K were re-evaluated using the classic 6-grade and the new 12-grade intensity scales, respectively. The strongest tsunamis reported in the region of interest are those of 551 AD, 749, 1068, 1201, 1222, 1546 and 1759, all occurring along the Levantine coast from Gaza northward, with the exception of the 1222 wave which occurred in the Cyprean arc. The causative earthquakes, however, occur on land and are associated with the left-lateral strike-slip Levantine rift and, as such, remain unexplained. In this paper we speculate on the mechanism of these events. A second tsunami zone follows the Cyprean arc, where the situation of subaqueous seismogenic sources favours the generation of tsunamis by co-seismic fault displacements. Submarine or coastal earth slumping, however, may be an additional tsunamigenic component. Based on historical data, the average tsunami recurrence in the Cyprus-Levantine Sea region is roughly estimated to be around 30 years, 120 years and 375 years for moderate (k/K ≥ 2/3), strong (k/K ≥ 3/5) and very strong (k/K ≥ 5/8) events, respectively. The rate of tsunami occurrence equals 0.033, 8.3 × 10 −3 and 2.7 × 10 −3 events/year for intensity k/K ≥ 2/3, 3/5 and 5/8, respectively. For a Poissonian (random) process the probabilities of observing at least one moderate, strong or very strong tsunami are 0.28, 0.01 and 3 × 10 −3 within 1 year, 0.81, 0.34 and 0.13 within 50 years and 0.96, 0.56 and 0.24 within 100 years, respectively. The tsunami potential in the Cyprus-Levantine Sea area is low relative to other Mediterranean tsunamigenic regions. However, the destructiveness of some historical events indicates the need to evaluate tsunami hazard by all available means. In addition, remote tsunamigenic sources, such as those of 1303 and 1481 in the eastern Hellenic arc, are able to threaten the coasts of the Cyprus-Levantine region and, therefore, such regional tsunamis should be taken into account in the evaluation of the tsunami risk of the region. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Fokaefs & Gerassimos Papadopoulos, 2007. "Tsunami hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: strong earthquakes and tsunamis in Cyprus and the Levantine Sea," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 40(3), pages 503-526, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:40:y:2007:i:3:p:503-526
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-006-9011-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-006-9011-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-006-9011-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerassimos Papadopoulos, 2003. "Tsunami Hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: Strong Earthquakes and Tsunamis in the Corinth Gulf, Central Greece," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 29(3), pages 437-464, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shmuel Marco & Oded Katz & Yehoshua Dray, 2014. "Historical sand injections on the Mediterranean shore of Israel: evidence for liquefaction hazard," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 74(3), pages 1449-1459, December.
    2. Nazik Öğretmen & Domenico Cosentino & Elsa Gliozzi & Paola Cipollari & Annalisa Iadanza & Cengiz Yildirim, 2015. "Tsunami hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: geological evidence from the Anatolian coastal area (Silifke, southern Turkey)," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 79(3), pages 1569-1589, December.
    3. Busra Celikbas & Duygu Tufekci-Enginar & Gozde Guney Dogan & Cagil Kolat & Marzia Santini & Alessandro Annunziato & Ocal Necmioglu & Ahmet Cevdet Yalciner & Mehmet Lutfi Suzen, 2023. "Pedestrian evacuation time calculation against tsunami hazard for southern coasts of Bodrum peninsula," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 119(1), pages 243-260, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. O. V. Novikova & A. I. Gorshkov, 2022. "Local tsunamigenic sources in Greece, identified by pattern recognition," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 113(2), pages 1335-1348, September.
    2. Grezio Anita & Laura Sandri & Warner Marzocchi & Andrea Argnani & Paolo Gasparini & Jacopo Selva, 2012. "Probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment for Messina Strait Area (Sicily, Italy)," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 64(1), pages 329-358, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:40:y:2007:i:3:p:503-526. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.