Catalogue of tsunamis generated in Italy and in Côte d'Azur, France: a step towards a unified catalogue of tsunamis in Europe

Abstract

This work presents a catalogue of the tsunamis generated in the seas watering the Italian coasts, including the neighbouring area of Côte d'Azur (France). Events generated far from Italy and affecting the Italian coasts are not taken into account here. The catalogue, that we will also call the Quick-Look Catalog (QLC), is organised in three main sections that are named the Quick-Look Table, the Quick-Look Accounts File and the References File, having the respective abbreviations of QLT, QLAF and RF. The QLT is a synoptic table containing the relevant information available for each event, one table row corresponding to one event. More details are provided in the QLAF, where each event is dedicated a specific subsection: here the description of the tsunami includes all essential aspects that are suitably referenced and is preceded by a concise report concerning the tsunami cause. Lastly, the RF is the list of all the papers and publications quoted in the QLT and QLAF. Notice that efforts have been made to qualify each event by means of contemporaneous sources, although later sources and indirect sources, such as existing catalogues, have not been disregarded. Besides, specific recent studies on the events have been given special mention. In this work some general review of the past catalogues of tsunamis and of recent trends in the subject are expressed. Particularly, great attention is given to analysing the CFB of the Italian tsunamis due to Caputo and his collaborators (Caputo and Faita, 1984; Bedosti and Caputo, 1986), the acronym being formed by the ordered initials of the authors. Motivations clarifying the need for a new catalogue of the Italian tsunamis are illustrated circumstantially. The very different philosophies that are at the basis of the CFB and of the present QLC lead to quite diverse products and results, that are summarised by a table where the events included in the CFB and in the QLC are compared: the net effect of the rigorous scrutiny applied to the sources and of the coherent analysis applied to the data is that only 67 events are included in the QLC, which is about one third of the events that can be counted in the CFB.