June 17, 2017 Tsunami: Karrat Fjord, Greenland

A flood hit the village Nuugaatsiaq. Big waves hit also Uummannaq and Illorsuit. Later that night hit the waves also Upernavik. Later Sunday morning, police said that four people missing and 11 buildings were washed into the sea by the tsunami. Arctic Command published pictures of the mountain at Karrat Ice Fjord, where there has been a huge shift. An area of about 300 times 1100 meters crashed into the sea. According Arctic Command it is probably the cause of the tsunami on Saturday night. (ref #11830)

Tuesday afternoon informs Greenland Police that the four missing from the disaster at the weekend presumed dead.There is a family of two adults and a child. Additionally assumed an elderly man died, says Greenland Police KNR. (ref #11831)

Initially, based on seismic signals, it appeared as if a M=4.1 earthquake caused the slide. However, in the aftermath of the event, scientists have examined the event more carefully, and have now determined that there was no earthquake. Instead, the landslide was so large that it generated significant seismic energy. Two clues that led scientists to see that there had in fact been no earthquake were the duration and characteristic of the seismic signals. Not only did the seismic waves last for approximately five minutes, but they were monochromatic and slowly increased in amplitude (the highest amplitude waves lasted about 30 seconds). Such traits, according to the IRIS blog, authored by John Clinton (ETH Zurich), Tine Larsen, Trine Dahl-Jensen, Peter Voss (GEUS Copenhagen), and Meredith Nettles (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University) are "indicative of complex landslide signals." (ref #11836)

The team, including the acclaimed environmental scientist Hermann Fritz, has estimated that the wave at the coast where the landslide struck reached a marked 90 meters altitude. It is more than twice as high as the Round Tower. On the opposite side of the fjord, the height according to the researchers was 50 meters. (ref #11854)

On the evening of 17 June 2017, a landslide-generated tsunami reached the village of Nuugaatsiaq, Greenland. Four persons are presumed dead as a result.

Based on the 3D OAP terrain model developed from helicopter photos taken 3 weeks after the event, we conclude that the Karrat Fjord landslide was an Btsunamigenic extremely rapid rock avalanche^ with a total mobilized volume of 58 Mm3, approximately 45 Mm3 of which entered the fjord over the span of less than 5 min. The upper extent of the release area was at over 1200- m elevation, and the main body of the rock avalanche source was 800 m across and reached over 300-m thickness in places. (ref #11994)

On 17 June 2017, at 21:39 local time, a large landslide (2000 m long and 1100 m wide, Fig. 1a) occurred in Greenland when a landslide mass descended into the sea at Karrat Fjord. Differential digital elevation models (DEMs) estimate a landslide volume of 35-51 million cubic meters. The landslide triggered a tsunami that washed up in a remote region near the village of Nuugaatsiaq, reportedly killing four people, injuring dozens, and washing away eleven homes (Bessette-Kirton et al., 2017). (ref #12130)

On June 17 2017, the western coast of Greenland was the site of a tsunami which flooded several villages, killing 4 people and destroying 11 houses in the village of Nuugaatsiaq. This tsunami was triggered by a subaerial landslide which occurred in afjord 32 km ENE of Nuugaatsiaq[...]The 2017 landslide was identified the next day by an aerial survey of the Arktisk Kommando of the Danish Defence, about 32 km ENE of Nuugaatsiaq, upstream Karrat Fjord. The failed mass consists of a portion of bluff about 1000 m wide and 500 m tall (ref #12404)