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Eastern Mediterranean tectonics and tsunami hazard inferred from the AD 365 earthquake

Nature Geoscience volume 1, pages 268–276 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Historical accounts describe an earthquake and tsunami on 21 July AD 365 that destroyed cities and drowned thousands of people in coastal regions from the Nile Delta to modern-day Dubrovnik. The location and tectonic setting of this earthquake have been uncertain until now. Here, we present evidence from radiocarbon data and field observations that western Crete was lifted above sea level, by up to 10 m, synchronously with the AD 365 earthquake. The distribution of uplift, combined with observations of present-day seismicity, suggest that this earthquake occurred not on the subduction interface beneath Crete, but on a fault dipping at about 30∘ within the overriding plate. Calculations of tsunami propagation show that the uplift of the sea floor associated with such an earthquake would have generated a damaging tsunami through much of the eastern Mediterranean. Measurement of the present rate of crustal shortening near Crete yields an estimate of ∼5,000 yr for the repeat time of tsunamigenic events on this single fault in western Crete, but if the same process takes place along the entire Hellenic subduction zone, such events may occur approximately once every 800 yr.

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Figure 1: Location maps for this study.
Figure 2: Seismicity and topography in the area of Crete.
Figure 3: Observed and modelled uplift associated with the AD 365 earthquake.
Figure 4: Tsunami calculation.
Figure 5: Schematic diagram of tectonic setting of the AD 365 earthquake.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NERC, through grant NER/A/S/2001/01607 to P.C.E., and to COMET. M.D.P., G.J.G. and C.C.P. acknowledge the support of NERC under grants NE/C51829X/1 and NE/C52101X/1. We are indebted to H. Billiris, D. Paradisis and C. Raptakis for their support in the establishment and maintenance of the continuous GPS network whose results we use here, and to N. Forrest and M. Ziebart for many helpful discussions about processing continuous GPS data. We thank D. Hatzfeld for providing microearthquake data. We thank M. Brasier, N. Charnley, J. Darrell, O. Green, B. Rosen, P. Taylor, A. Thomas and the staff of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, for their help in obtaining 14C dates, with species identification and with sample preparation and imaging. We thank D. Ham for advice on computational modelling. We are grateful to R. Bilham, S. Lamb and P. Molnar for comments that improved the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bullard Laboratories, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0EZ, UK

    B. Shaw & J. A. Jackson

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK

    N. N. Ambraseys

  3. The Academy of Athens, Athens 10679, Greece

    N. N. Ambraseys

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK

    P. C. England & M. A. Floyd

  5. Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK

    G. J. Gorman, C. C. Pain & M. D. Piggott

  6. Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

    T. F. G. Higham

  7. CNRS-Géosciences Azur, University of Nice, 250, Rue Albert Einstein, Valbonne, 06560, France

    J.-M. Nocquet

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  1. B. Shaw
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Contributions

N.N.A., P.C.E., J.A.J. and B.S. were involved in project planning. P.C.E., T.F.G.H., J.A.J. and B.S. carried out the field work and sampling. G.J.G., C.C.P. and M.D.P. are responsible for the tsunami modelling, and M.A.F. and J.-M.N. carried out the GPS analysis. T.F.G.H. is responsible for the radiocarbon dating. N.N.A. researched historical references to the earthquake.

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Correspondence to B. Shaw.

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Shaw, B., Ambraseys, N., England, P. et al. Eastern Mediterranean tectonics and tsunami hazard inferred from the AD 365 earthquake. Nature Geosci 1, 268–276 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo151

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