Observations of extreme wave runup events on the US Pacific Northwest coast

31 January 2023

In this work, the authors examine a set of observed extreme, non-earthquake-related and non-landslide-related wave runup events. Runup events with similar characteristics have previously been attributed to trapped waves, atmospheric disturbances, and abrupt breaking of long waves. However, the authors find that none of these mechanisms were likely at work in the observations they examined. They show that instead, these runup events were more likely due to energetic growth of bound infragravity waves.

Contact: Chuan Li (chuanli@ucla.edu)