# Air-burst Generated Tsunamis

## TL;DR

This study investigates whether air-bursting small asteroids over water can generate tsunamis, finding that such events pose minimal tsunami threat based on numerical simulations and analytical models.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a numerical and analytical analysis of air-burst generated tsunamis, highlighting their negligible threat compared to other tsunami sources.

## Key findings

- Numerical simulations show very little tsunami generated by air bursts.
- An explicit solution model explains the phenomena observed in simulations.
- More sophisticated models suggest compressibility and dispersion effects are minor.

## Abstract

This paper examines the questions of whether smaller asteroids that burst in the air over water can generate tsunamis that could pose a threat to distant locations. Such air burst-generated tsunamis are qualitatively different than the more frequently studied earthquake-generated tsunamis, and differ as well from impact asteroids. Numerical simulations are presented using the shallow water equations in several settings, demonstrating very little tsunami threat from this scenario. A model problem with an explicit solution that demonstrates and explains the same phenomena found in the computations is analyzed. We discuss the question of whether compressibility and dispersion are important effects that should be included, and show results from a more sophisticated model problem using the linearized Euler equations that begins to addresses this.