In a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Florida researchers have discovered numerous tsunami risks in Gulf of Mexico waters related to submarine landslides.
In the paper entitled Abundant Spontaneous and Dynamically Triggered Submarine Landslides in the Gulf of Mexico, they said submarine landslides can pose hazards to coastal communities and offshore infrastructure, including triggering tsunamis and damaging oil platforms, pipelines, and submarine cables.
These devastations may further cause environmental damages such as oil spills. Identifying these landslides and understanding their failure processes have both societal significance and intellectual merit. Using 8 years of continuous seismic data, we found 85 previously unknown submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico from 2008 to 2015. Ten of these landslides occurred without preceding earthquakes while the remaining 75 were triggered by the passing seismic surface waves from distant earthquakes. Our approach suggests that a remote detection technology for offshore landslides could be applied in tsunami warning systems