Subject: Seiches
In simple terms, what is a seiche? Could a seiche counteract the forward energy of a tsunami? How do you pronounce "seiche"?
Every enclosed body of water has a number of natural resonances. If you
sit in a bathtub part full of water and rock back and forth you'll find
that at the right period (about a second) you can easily get the waves
to grow until they overflow the bath. The resonant oscillation of the
water is a seiche. Seiches are often generated in swimming pools by
small oscillations from earthquakes - the oscillations happen to be at
the right frequency for the swimming pools to "catch" them. During the
Northridge earthquake of 1994, swimming pools all over Southern
California overflowed. During the great Alaska earthquake of 1964,
swimming pools as far away as Puerto Rico were set into oscillation!
Tsunamis generate seiches too, although we usually do not consider them
as seiches. The predominant period of the tsunami that hit Hawaii in
1946 was fifteen minutes. The natural resonant period of Hilo Bay is
about half-an-hour. That meant that every second wave was in phase with
the motion of Hilo Bay so that the sloshing of the bay built up. We
usually think of the damage to Hilo in 1946 as being simply from the
tsunami, but it was really a combination of the tsunami and a
tsunami-generated seiche.
Could a seiche counteract a tsunami? I assume here you are asking if a
seiche generated by seismic waves could counteract any tsunami
generated by the earthquake. Interesting idea! I'm afraid the answer is
"no," for two reasons. The first reason is timing. On the deep ocean,
tsunamis travel about 800 km/hour (500 mph). That's about 0.2 km/s.
Earthquake waves travel much faster, say 8 km/s (i.e., forty times
faster). Any seiche excited by earthquake waves will have died down
before the tsunami arrives. The second reason is frequency of
oscillation. Earthquake waves tend to have most of their energy at
periods (the time from one wave crest to the next) of ten seconds to a
few minutes. Tsunamis tend to have periods of five minutes to as much
as an hour. So a seiche excited by earthquake waves would be at too
high a frequency to interact with the tsunami.
How do you pronounce "seiche?" Sigh-shh. The word was introduced to
science by the Swiss seismologist F.A. Forel in 1890. The word had
apparently long been used in the German-speaking part of Switzerland to
describe oscillations in alpine lakes.
Dr. Gerard Fryer
Hawaii Inst. of Geophysics & Planetology
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822