Modeling Tsunami in South China Sea with Boussinesq equations

To describe the dispersion effects, the high order Boussinesq (FUNWAVE) is adopted to simulate the tsunami propagating from Manila Trench to the South China Sea region. The Okada model is employed to generate tsunami, the surface elevation and depth-averaged horizontal velocity at t=5 min computed by the shallow water equations are then interpolated to serve as the initial condition of the Boussinesq model. Different tsunami propagation scenarios with magnitude of M-w=8.0 are presented, and the arrival time and tsunami wave distribution are described and analyzed for the assessment of tsunami hazard near coasts around South China Sea. It is concluded that the dispersion effects in South China Sea is not significant. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.