Marsha Berger: Modeling and Simulation of Asteroid-Generated Tsunamis

In 2013, an uncharted asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, causing damage for a radius of 20 kilometers. We examine the question of what would happen if an asteroid burst over water instead of land. Could it generate a tsunami that would cause widespread damage far away? We present numerical simulations using the GeoClaw software and the shallow water equations in a variety of settings. We have a model problem with an explicit solution that explains the phenomena found in the computations. Finally, we discuss whether compressibility and dispersion are important effects that should be included, and show results using the linearized Euler equations that begin to address this.