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  SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES | 
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| November 4, 2025 | 
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 AbstractsDiego Arcas (NOAA) ___________________________ Onno Bokhove (Twente) ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ A series of experiments in deep water conducted in the Large Air-Sea 
              Interactions Facility (LASIF-Marseille, France) showed that wind 
              blowing over a short wave group due to the dispersive focusing of 
              a longer frequency modulated wave train (chirped wave packet) may 
              increase the time duration of the extreme wave event by delaying 
              the defocusing stage. These experi- ___________________________ In a series of seminal papers, Ward [1980, 1981] has shown that tsunamis can be interpreted as a special branch of the normal modes (free oscillations) of a planet including an oceanic layer. This approach is particularly powerful as it expresses naturally the coupling between the solid Earth (where most tsunami sources are located) and the oceanic column, and in particular can handle directly any intermediate sedimentary structure. Routine algorithms used in classical seismological synthesis are seamlessly applicable to tsunami excitation. Normal mode theory is also extended effortlessly to higher frequencies outside the shallow water approximations, known to have a crucial effect on the final small scale of harbor response. On the other hand, its limitations stem from its inability to handle lateral heterogeneity. Recently, and especially in the wake of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, 
              a number of fascinating observations were made on instruments not 
              designed for that purpose: in most cases, they express subtle coupling 
              between media of extremely different properties, such as the oceanic 
              column, the solid Earth, or the atmosphere. They include recording 
              of tsunamis by seismometers at land stations and on the ocean bottom, 
              by hydrophones of the CTBTO, the definitive observation and explanation 
              of tsunami shadows, tsunami signatures in the geomagnetic field, 
              the generation of deep infrasound, and the perturbation of the ionosphere 
              detected on GPS receiver arrays. In most cases, these phenomena 
              are readily explained by the continuation (in a mathematical sense) 
              of the tsunami eigenfunction outside of the water column; we will 
              show that in many instances, the order of magnitude of the effect 
              is well predicted by simple arguments derived under the normal mode 
              approach. ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ ___________________________ This talk is intended to survey our current understanding of tsunamis. It answers four (or maybe five) basic questions. What is a tsunami? How do tsunamis work? Does soliton theory apply to tsunamis ? What can be done to protect people from the dangers of tsunamis? (If time permits: Why are some some tsunamis deadly and some benign?) ___________________________ When a solitary wave (a model of tsunami in the nearshore shallow 
              water) impinges on a reflective vertical wall, it can take the formation 
              of Mach reflection (a geometrically similar reflection from acoustics). 
              The mathematical theory predicts that the amplification at the reflection 
              is not twice, but four times the incident wave amplitude. Evidently, 
              this has an important implication to engineering design practice. 
              Our laboratory experiments verify detailed features of the Mach 
              reflection phenomenon, whereas contradict the theory in terms of 
              the maximum four-fold amplification: the maximum amplification observed 
              in the laboratory was 2.92, instead. The reason for the discrepancy 
              is discussed. In addition, we show that a tsunami along the reflective 
              wall can reach higher than the maximum solitary wave height. Once 
              the wave breaking happens along the wall, the substantial increase 
              in water-surface slope results along the wave crest away from the 
              wall.  
 
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