title: Meteotsunamis in the Laurentian Great Lakes.
abstract: The generation mechanism of meteotsunamis, which are meteorologically induced water waves with spatial/temporal characteristics and behavior similar to seismic tsunamis, is poorly understood. We quantify meteotsunamis in terms of seasonality, causes, and occurrence frequency through the analysis of long-term water level records in the Laurentian Great Lakes. The majority of the observed meteotsunamis happen from late-spring to mid-summer and are associated primarily with convective storms. Meteotsunami events of potentially dangerous magnitude (height > 0.3 m) occur an average of 106 times per year throughout the region. These results reveal that meteotsunamis are much more frequent than follow from historic anecdotal reports. Future climate scenarios over the United States show a likely increase in the number of days favorable to severe convective storm formation over the Great Lakes, particularly in the spring season. This would suggest that the convectively associated meteotsunamis in these regions may experience an increase in occurrence frequency or a temporal shift in occurrence to earlier in the warm season. To date, meteotsunamis in the area of the Great Lakes have been an overlooked hazard.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
authors.forename: Adam J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bechle
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
authors.forename: Chin H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Climate and Atmospheric Science Section, ISWS, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: David A R
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Kristovich
authors.affiliation: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, 4840 S. State Rd, Ann Arbor, MI 48108, USA.
authors.forename: Eric J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Water Center, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Schwab
authors.affiliation: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Institute of Ocean Sciences, 9860 W. Saanich Rd., Sidney, BC, Canada.|P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 36 Nakhimovsky Pr., Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Alexander B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Rabinovich