Climate change triggered a massive tsunami in Greenland

MADRID, (EUROPA PRESS) – The collapse of a mountain top into the sea, the result of melting ice caused by climate change, caused the huge 200-meter tsunami that hit a fjord in Greenland in 2023.

On September 16, 2023, a giant wave hit the uninhabited Dickson Fjord on the east coast of Greenland. In some places, traces of the flooding reached 200 meters high. An analysis of seismic signals also revealed that a standing wave triggered by the megatsunami was tossing back and forth in the narrow bay of Dickson Fjord for more than a week.

Now, new research published in Science concludes that the phenomenon was triggered when the top of a mountain collapsed into the sea.

Climate change set the stage for the landslide by melting the glacier at the base of the mountain, destabilizing the more than 25 million cubic meters of rock and ice — enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — that eventually crashed into the sea. As climate change continues to melt Earth’s polar regions, it could lead to an increase in large, destructive landslides like this one, according to seismologist Alice Gabriel of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and co-author of the paper.

The team, comprising 68 scientists from 41 research institutions, analysed satellite and ground-based images to document the enormous volume of rock and ice in the landslide that triggered the tsunami. They also analysed seismic waves to model the dynamics and trajectory of the rock and ice avalanche as it moved down the glacial gully and into the fjord.

To understand the tsunami and the resulting standing wave, researchers used supercomputers to create high-resolution simulations of the events.

“It was a huge challenge to make an accurate computer simulation of such a long-lasting and turbulent tsunami,” Gabriel said in a statement.

Finally, these simulations were able to closely match the tsunami height as well as the long-duration oscillations.

By integrating these various data sources, the researchers determined that the nine-day seismic signal was caused by the massive landslide and resulting standing wave within Greenland’s Dickson Fjord.