Abstract
Numerical experiments of tsunami generation and propagation are carried out for five earthquakes which occurred off the Pacific coast of the Tohoku and Hokkaido districts. The tsunami sources used in the experiments are the vertical displacement field of the sea bottom derived from the seismic fault model for each earthquake. Water surface disturbances are computed by a finite difference hydrodynamical method with finer grids in shallower water. The comparison of the computed tsunami behavior with available tsunami records along the coast shows that the distribution of observed tsunami heights can be explained in the first approximation by seismic fault models while the observed heights are 1.2 to 1.6 times larger than the computed heights. An example of a fault model inferred from seismic data (June 12, 1968) which is not suitable for a tsunami source is presented.
