Tonga Tsunami at Napier 

Data kindly supplied by Port of Napier

Commentary

At Napier Port, strong far infra gravity ( FIG ) waves are ubiquitous. They excite seiche both at embayment and at harbour scales. The waves that arrived on 4 May are indistinguishable from the regular FIG waves that occur, except for the time when they began to get larger, which happened to be a few hours after the earthquake.

Figure 1. Tonga tsunami at Napier Port showing: A. long wave record; B. significant (red) and maximum (blue) wave heights, and high tide times (green diamonds); C. period of significant waves; and D. distribution of significant wave height with time and period. EQ denotes the time of the earthquake. Times are in NZST (UTC + 12).

How were these calculated?
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