Definition
Seismic seiche is a term first used by Kvale (1955) to discuss oscillations of lake levels in Norway and England caused by the Assam earthquake of August 15, 1950. This definition has since been generalized to apply to standing waves set up in closed, or partially closed, bodies of water including rivers, shipping channels, lakes, swimming pools and tanks due to the passage of seismic waves from an earthquake.
The first published mention of seismic seiches is thought to be reports of those observed throughout much of Europe due to the great earthquake at Lisbon, Portugal in 1755 (Wilson, 1953; Richter, 1958). In addition to the Lisbon and Assam earthquakes, seismic seiches at teleseismic distances have been observed for many other large earthquakes including the 1964 Alaska (McGarr and Vorhis, 1968) and the 2002 Denali, Alaska, an earthquake that caused damaging seiches in Lake Union, Seattle, Washington at an epicentral distance of 2,400 km (Barberopoulou et al., 2004).
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Bibliography
Barberopoulou, A., Qamar, A., Pratt, T. L., Creager, K., and Steele, W. P., 2004. Local amplification of seismic waves from the Denali earthquake and damaging seiches in Lake Union, Seattle, Washington. Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L03607, doi:10.1029/2003GL018569.
Donn, W. L., 1964. Alaska earthquake of 27 March, 1964: Remote seiche stimulation. Science, 146, 261–262.
Kvale, A., 1955. Seismic seiches in Norway and England during the Assam earthquake of August 15, 1950. Bulletin Seismological Society of America, 45, 93–113.
McGarr, A., 1965. Excitation of seiches in channels by seismic waves. Journal of Geophysical Research, 70, 847–854.
McGarr, A., and Vorhis, R. C., 1968. Seismic seiches from the March 1964 Alaska earthquake. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, 544E, E1–E43.
Richter, C. F., 1958. Elementary Seismology. San Francisco: WH Freeman, 768 pp.
Wilson, B. W., 1953. Coastal seiches, pt. 1 of Oscillations of the sea and the phenomenon of range. The Dock and Harbour Authority [London], pp. 41–45.
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McGarr, A. (2011). Seismic Seiches. In: Gupta, H.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8702-7_186
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