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Earthquake Early Warning and Tsunami Warning of the Japan Meteorological Agency, and Their Performance in the 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake (\({M}_{{\mathrm{w}}}\) 9.0)

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Book cover Early Warning for Geological Disasters

Part of the book series: Advanced Technologies in Earth Sciences ((ATES))

Abstract

The 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake (M\(_{{w}}\) 9.0) occurred on March 11, 2011, causing strong ground motion around northeastern Japan, and generating a devastating tsunami, that killed more than 16,000 people. Before the strong ground motion hit the cities, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) announcements to the general public of the Tohoku district; the warning then was automatically broadcast through TV, radio and cellular phone messages. JMA also issued the first tsunami warnings/advisories based on hypocentral parameters (i.e., location, focal depth and magnitude) at 14:49 (Japan Standard Time), which was about three minutes after the occurrence of the earthquake, and then upgraded them using sea-level observation data. This paper reports on the performance of the EEW and the tsunami warnings/advisories, the lessons learned from the earthquake, and a direction for improving the warning systems.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewer whose comments were useful in revising the manuscript. The authors also thank K. Iwakiri, N. Hayashimoto, H. Kikuta, K. Hirano, Y. Yamada, Y. Ishigaki, T. Kuwayama, K. Nakata, and T. Shimoyama for their help in completing the figures. Seismic intensity data were provided by JMA as well as NIED and local governments and municipalities. Waveform data were obtained from the JMA network, K-NET and KiK-net of NIED. The unified hypocenter catalog and CMT catalog of JMA were used in this analysis. JMA EEW uses a combination of several techniques developed by joint research with the Japan Railway Technical Research Institute, and also by NIED. It also uses real-time data from Hi-net of NIED in addition to JMA’s own network for hypocenter determination. Sea-level data are not only from JMA, but also from the Cabinet Office, the Ports and Harbours Bureau of MLTI, the Japan Coast Guard, GSI, and local governments. We thank all of these organizations for their efforts in maintaining these observations and providing the data. Figures were made using Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel and Smith 1995). This work is partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24310132 “Establishment of tsunami decay forecasting model”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Nagamine 1-1, Tsukuba, 305-0052, Japan

    M. Hoshiba

  2. Seismological and Volcanological Department, Japan Meteorological Agency, Ohte-machi 1-3-4, Chiyoda, Tokyo, 100-8122, Japan

    T. Ozaki

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  1. M. Hoshiba
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Correspondence to M. Hoshiba .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Geophysical Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Friedemann Wenzel

  2. Section 2.1 Earthquake Risk and Early Wa, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany

    Jochen Zschau

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Hoshiba, M., Ozaki, T. (2014). Earthquake Early Warning and Tsunami Warning of the Japan Meteorological Agency, and Their Performance in the 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake (\({M}_{{\mathrm{w}}}\) 9.0). In: Wenzel, F., Zschau, J. (eds) Early Warning for Geological Disasters. Advanced Technologies in Earth Sciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12233-0_1

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