Potential tsunami generated in the Okinawa Trench or the Manila Trench may attack the southeast coast of China. The continental shelves with extremely gentle slope in the China Seas affect the evolvement of tsunami waves. In this paper, we carry out the simulation of tsunami propagation based on the fully nonlinear and highly dispersive Boussinesq model, which could describe the nonlinearity and dispersion of water waves quite well. So the undulation characters could be well presented. In terms of the real topographies of the East China Sea and the South China Sea, we take some typical profiles to simulate the hypothetical tsunamis generated in the Okinawa Trench and the Manila Trench. Different waveforms in the near shore regions are obtained. The N-shape tsunami waves will evolve into long wave trains, undular bores or solitons near the coastal area. The numerical results of the near shore waveform provide essential conditions for the further studies of tsunami runup and inundation.
The Okinawa Trench in the East China Sea and the Manila Trench in the South China Sea are considered to be the regions with high risk of potential tsunamis induced by submarine earthquakes. Tsunami waves will impact the southeast coast of China if tsunamis occur in these areas. In this paper, the horizontal two-dimensional Boussinesq model is used to simulate tsunami generation, propagation, and runnp in a domain with complex geometrical boundaries. The temporary varying bottom boundary condition is adopted to describe the initial tsunami waves motivated by the submarine faults. The Indian Ocean tsunami is simulated by the numerical model as a validation case. The time series of water elevation and runup on the beach are compared with the measured data from field survey. The agreements indicate that the Boussinesq model can be used to simulate tsunamis and predict the waveform and runup. Then, the hypothetical tsunamis in the Okinawa Trench and the Manila Trench are simulated by the numerical model. The arrival time and maximum wave height near coastal cities are predicted by the model. It turns out that the leading depression N-wave occurs when the tsunami propagates in the continental shelf from the Okinawa Trench. The scenarios of the tsunami in the Manila Trench demonstrate significant effects on the coastal area around the South China Sea.
