Summary
Southern Peru and northern Chile have been exposed to several large earthquakes
and catastrophic tsunamis. Two of the largest events that have affected the coasts of these
two countries took place in the later part of the XIX century; these are the August 13,
1868, and the May 9, 1877 (local time), events. Their estimated magnitudes are of the
order of 9 rupturing contiguous segments of approximately 400-500 km each. Both of
them accommodated the convergence between Nazca and South American plates
producing large seafloor and coastal elevation changes generating significant tsunamis
that affected most of the coastlines of the Pacific basin. Reported local run-ups reached
20 m. Both trans-pacific tsunamis were recorded at one tide gage in Fort Point, in the
Presidio area of San Francisco Bay, California. Records at Sausalito (approximately 6 km
away from Fort Point) for the 1877 event mimic the signal recorded at Fort Point. Here
we report on the characteristics of these tide gage records and compare them to recent
records of tsunamis produced by the largest earthquakes in the region. Numerical
simulations of the tsunamis have been constructed.
Background and Discussion
Seismogenic zones in Chile are basically well established: large shallow (0-50 km)
thrust earthquakes along the coast, large deeper (70-100 km) tensional as well as
compressional events within the subducting Nazca plate, and very shallow seismicity (020 km) in a few places, such as the cordilleran region of central Chile and the southern
extremity of the continent by the Magellan Strait. Deeper seismicity (150 to 650 km)
occurs farther to the east, beneath Bolivia and north-western Argentina.
The large thrust earthquakes, responsible for most of the damage recorded in
history, are located along the coast from Arica (18S, the northernmost extreme of coastal
Chile) to the triple junction at Taitao Peninsula (46S). With magnitudes that can reach
[3] Nishenko, S. P., 1985. Seismic potential for large and great interplate earthquakes
along the Chilean and southern Peruvian margins of South America: Quantitative
reapprisal. J. Geophys. Res., 90, 3589-3615.
[4] Beck, S. L., S. Barrientos, E. Kausel and M. Reyes, 1998. Source characteristics of
historic earthquakes along the central Chile subduction zone. J. South Am. Earth Sci., 11,
115-129.
[5] Cifuentes, I. L., 1989. The 1960 Chilean Earthquake. J. Geophys. Res., 94(B1), 665
680.
[6] Barrientos, S.E., Ward, S.N., 1990. The 1960 earthquake: Inversion for slip
distribution from surface deformation. Geophys. J. Int., 103, 589-598.
[7] Cisternas, M., Atwater, B.F., Torrejon, F., Sawai, Y., Machuca, G., Lagos, M., Eipert,
A., Youlton, C., Salgado, I., Kamataki, T., Shishikura, M., Rajendran, C.P., Malik, J.K.,
Rizal, Y., Husni, M., 2005. Predecessors of the giant 1960 Chile earthquake. Nature, 437,
404-407.
[8] Lockridge, P.A., 1985. Tsunamis in Peru-Chile. Report SE-39, Boulder, WDC-A for
Solid Earth Geophysics, 97 pp.
[9] Diaz, J., 1992. Estudio de Fuentes de Tsunamis y de Terremotos: Aplicacin en el
Norte de Chile y Sur de Per. Tesis para optar el ttulo profesional de Oceangrafo.
Escuela de Ciencias del Mar, Facultad de Recursos naturales, Universidad Catlica de
Valparaso.
[10] Abe, K., 1979. Size of great earthquakes of 1837 1974 inferred from Tsunami
Data. J. Geophys. Res. 84, 1561-1568.
[11] Theberge, A.E., 2005. 150 years of tides on the Western coast: The longest series of
tidal observations in the Americas. U.S. Dept. of Commerce, NOAA, National Ocean
Service,Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services.