Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

On the cause of the 1908 Messina tsunami, southern Italy

2008; American Geophysical Union; Volume: 35; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1029/2008gl033251

1944-8007

Andrea Billi, R. Funiciello, Liliana Minelli, Claudio Faccenna, G. Neri, B. Orecchio, Debora Presti,

Earthquake Detection and Analysis

A century after the catastrophic event, the sources of the 1908 Messina, Southern Italy, earthquake and tsunami, which caused at least 60,000 deaths, remain uncertain. Through a simple backward ray‐tracing method, we convert the tsunami travel‐time data reported in a 100‐years‐old paper into distances and find that the sources of the earthquake and tsunami are different. Overturning a long‐held assumption, reconsideration of the available tsunami, bathymetric, seismic, and seismological data indicates that the tsunami was generated by an underwater landslide.