Alaska landslide could cause enormous tsunami, scientists warn .

So I live in Anchorage, Alaska, and Whittier is only about an hour away.
The articles and news releases basically state that there is an unstable mountain above a glacier could cause a pretty huge Tsunami that could hit the fishing town of Whittier at any moment. This is kind of unsettling.

Just wanted to see you other fellow ATSers know about these things and if anyone has any information to add.

I've been a lurker for many years but this is my first post....so go easy on me. 😎

"An open letter signed by 14 scientists with expertise in landslides, tsunamis and climate change warns of an unstable mountain slope above the leading edge of the retreating Barry Glacier in Alaska.

This pending landslide could spawn an enormous tsunami in Harriman Fjord, which is located some 60 miles from Anchorage, which is home to an estimated 291,000 residents."

"A complete failure could be destructive throughout Barry Arm, Harriman Fjord, and parts of Port Wells. Our initial results show complex impacts further from the landslide than Barry Arm, with over 30-foot waves in some distant bays, including Whittier," the experts write."

"Warming temperatures have caused the retreat of a glacier that helps support a steep, mile-long slope along one flank of a fjord in Prince William Sound, about 60 miles east of Anchorage. With only a third of the slope now supported by ice, the scientists said, a landslide could be triggered by an earthquake, prolonged heavy rain or even a heat wave that could cause extensive melting of surface snow."

www.foxnews.com...

www.nytimes.com...

a reply to: SnagTail

Just wanted to see you other fellow ATSers know about these things and if anyone has any information to add.

Yes. Drop a lot of material into a confined body of water and you get a large displacement.
www.nps.gov...
www.lifeinnorway.net...

Thank you I have Family in AK and I had not heard of this.

It is not unprecedented, it happened in the late 50's in Alaska, earthquake, triggered a massive slide. The slide hit the water, the resulting tsunami scrubbed vegetation 1,700 feet up

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Phage

Darn Vikings, always threatening us with the sea!

Certainly not unprecedented either.
Storegga Slide

It's climate change, water/ice is heavy and rock typically doesn't bend well. Now since I've said a dirty word I might as well state that it doesn't really matter if it's manmade or not. The cause and effects are real.

a reply to: SnagTail

Appreciate the post! Have a close friend in Skagway, of course that’s quite some (unaffected) distance away but it’s still nice to give them a heads up to check on things.

Harriman Fjord is that Harrison Ford's Swedish cousin?

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: Phage

Darn Vikings, always threatening us with the sea!

Certainly not unprecedented either.
Storegga Slide

It's climate change, water/ice is heavy and rock typically doesn't bend well. Now since I've said a dirty word I might as well state that it doesn't really matter if it's manmade or not. The cause and effects are real.

Its unfortunate that many folks are afraid to confront the very real effects of climate change because they disagree with the beliefs of some on the cause.

I wish we would put the cause(s) on the back burner and start getting more agreement on how to deal with the effects. Personally, I care very little about what is causing climate change in comparison to the "how are we going to deal with the effects." - we'd be better off than either denying its existence or using it to create taxes.

a reply to: SnagTail
What you would experience in the Harriman Fford would be a mere ripple (sorry for being trite) compared to the Mega-tsunami that would result from Las Palmas when that goes. And it will, it's only a matter of time and absolutely nothing to do with climate change/ global warming etc..
It will travel across the Atlantic and devastate the whole of the Eastern seaboard of the US. Please look at the films about it on the "tube".

a reply to: crayzeed

Here ya go



We've been fighting the water through out history. It's a real threat to our aptly named low countries.
As progressive a nation we might seem, we are even more progressive when it comes to keeping the water out.
But these things, there is no stopping them. They are real ticking timeboms like big rocks falling from the sky.
Lets hope they're few and far in between

a reply to: crayzeed

In the 90's to early 2000's I used to go to Gran Canaria at least three times a year, sometimes more, and there were often rumours that Cumbre Vieja was going to erupt and part of the island would literally slide into the sea.

If, or as you say when, it does happen the resultant tsunami's could devastate parts of the north western African coast, parts of Europe including Spain, Portugal and even South West UK and possibly even the American eastern seaboard.

Such an eruption is 'imminent'....but geologically speaking 'imminent' could mean in the next thousand years or so.

I'm a bit overdue a visit but I can't see me going this year.

a reply to: crayzeed

What you would experience in the Harriman Fford would be a mere ripple (sorry for being trite) compared to the Mega-tsunami that would result from Las Palmas when that goes.

La Palma? No, not really.

Proper modeling of dispersive effects (Mader 2001) - provides much more realistic far-field wave estimates, in the unlikely event of a large-scale, La Palma slope failure. Mader's model of a La Palma slide estimates that the east coast of the U.S. and the Caribbean would receive tsunami waves of less than 3 meters and the European and African coasts would receive waves less than 10 meters high. However, this represents the upper limit. Full Navier-Stokes modeling brings the maximum expected tsunami wave amplitude off the U.S. east coast to about one meter.

Sudden, catastrophic, flank collapses of island stratovolcanoes are extremely rare phenomena and none have occurred within recorded history. Numerical modeling of mega tsunami generation (Ward &. Day, 2001, Ward 2001) has been based on unrealistic scenarios of massive flank collapses of volcanoes in La Palma, Canary islands, and the island of Hawaii.

www.drgeorgepc.com...

There is no evidence that a "megatsunami" has ever been generated by La Palma (or anywhere else in the Atlantic) and little reason to expect that one will be.

a reply to: dogstar23

I couldn't agree more.

We don't exactly do too well with the disasters created from our own misfortunes I'd hate to see how we'd react to nature throwing us a real curve ball.

a reply to: Freeborn

Such an eruption is 'imminent'....but geologically speaking 'imminent' could mean in the next thousand years or so.

Not much reason to think a volcanic eruption would cause a collapse, the island is actually quite stable now. But given time, that will change.

The researchers calculate that the surest way to cause a landslide is to wait for at least another 10,000 years. The Cumbre Vieja volcano steadily grows and this causes the flanks of the volcano to become steeper and less stable. ‘A combination of substantial vertical growth and eruption forces will most probably act to trigger failure. To reach substantial growth, a time span in the order of 10,000 years will be required’, Van Berlo states.

Nor is it likely to be a single catastrophic event.

Even if the volcanic flank did become critically unstable, it isn’t likely it will go with a splash. ‘Of course the flank won’t go in one piece, but break up first’, Nieuwenhuis said. ‘And it could very well slide down a little and then settle in a more stable configuration, just like our dykes in Holland often do when they go unstable.’ The plunge won’t be a fast and sudden event, Nieuwenhuis stresses. ‘It will more be like a steam locomotive powering up. The first meter of movement should take several days.’

phys.org...

a reply to: Jubei42
Oh that old chestnut again!

Evaluation Of The Threat Of Mega Tsunami Generation From Postulated Massive Slope Failures Of Island Volcanoes On La Palma, Canary Islands, And On The Island Of Hawaii

The upper limit of his modeling study shows that the east coast of the U.S. and the Caribbean would receive waves less than 3 meters high. The European and African coasts would have waves less than 10 meters high. However, full Navier-Stokes modeling of the same La Palma failure, brings the maximum expected tsunami wave amplitude off the U.S. east coast to about one meter.

10 metres is not insubstantial, but is not a disaster level event.