Occurrence of Hazardous Meteotsunamis Coupled with Pressure Disturbance Traveling in the Yellow Sea, Korea

Abstract

Several unexpected abnormal waves occurred near the west coast of Korea on March 31, 2007, May 4, 2008, April 26, 2011, and caused enormous damage to property and human lives. None of the events reported at the time were noticeably large, such as earthquakes or typhoons. However, in all reported events, it was observed that sea-level pressure disturbances combined with clusters of the atmospheric instability were propagated from China to the west coast of Korea. After these atmospheric disturbances were observed along the coast, significant meteorological tsunamis were also observed at tidal stations near the accident site. On the hazardous meteotsunami dates, arrival time and duration of the high-frequency sea-level oscillations were correlated with the pressure disturbance and high rain rate. To analyze the interaction between the pressure disturbance and the following sea-level oscillations, their propagation characteristics were also compared. As a result, they traveled to the eastward crossing over the Yellow Sea with coupled propagation on the dates of the accident. This process made the sea-level fluctuated by rapid pressure changes and amplified by Proudman resonance in a specific range of depth.