Tsunamis due to ice masses: Different calving mechanisms and linkage to landslide-tsunamis - Data storage report

Land ice melt and retreat is one of the most visible effects of climate change and contributes ≈1.5 mm/year to global sea-level rise (SLR) of a total of ≈2.7 mm/year. Global warming results in the shrinking of ice masses in most ice covered regions in the World, particularly in the Alps and in Greenland and the Greenlandic mass loss is estimated at –269 ±51 Gt/year. A significant part of this mass loss is through the detachment of icebergs at glacier fronts in a mechanism called iceberg calving. Such iceberg impacting into a water body generate tsunamis, such called "iceberg-tsunamis". Such an iceberg-tsunami reached a height of 50 m at the Eqip Sermia outlet glacier in 2014. These tsunamis pose a considerable hazard for the local community, the fishing industry and the increasing number of tourists in ice covered areas. Several iceberg calving mechanisms have been proposed including fall, over-turning and capsizing. Reliable guidance on the upper limit of iceberg-tsunami heights are currently unavailable. A main reason for this limited understanding is that reliable field data are rare, such that laboratory tests complemented with numerical simulations are important to advance this research field. This was the aim of this HYDRALAB+ funded study. The wave features (height, length, velocity) caused by icebergs in function of the iceberg calving mechanisms (fall, over-turning, capsizing), as well as the mass volume and kinematics, were modelled in unique large-scale experiments. This minimised both scale effects and wave reflection. The attached file is an HYDRALAB+ standard Data Storage Report about these experiments.