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Tsunami from the Storegga Landslide

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Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science

Glossary

Mesolithic:

Refers to the middle period in the Stone Age. “Meso” means middle and “lithic” means stone or rock. The Mesolithic began with the Holocene warming, around 11,500 years Before Present (BP) and ended when farming was introduced in Scandinavia around 6000 years BP. The Storegga Slide happened in the Late Mesolithic when humans subsisted on fishing and hunting and the population had become more sedentary. Numerous excavations in Norway and Scotland have found Late Mesolithic settlements on or close to the former shores; these may have been affected by the Storegga tsunami.

Radiocarbon ages:

A radiocarbon year varies in length relative to a calendar year because the amount of radioactive carbon, 14C, in the atmosphere varies over time. Best age estimate of the Storegga tsunami is 7320 ± 20 radiocarbon years BP. By counting back tree rings year by year that have been systematically radiocarbon dated, this age would correspond to the tree rings that grew in the time...

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the MAREANO project at Norwegian Geological Survey (NGU) and the Norwegian Hydrographic Service that allowed me to use their detailed bathymetry for Figs. 4 and 5, which were nicely put together by Terje Thorsnes at NGU. Finn Løvholt and Jon Hill answered questions about the numerical simulations and also commented on the relevant text in that chapter; David Smith answered detailed questions about run-up measurements in Scotland, provided the photo from Maryton in Fig. 15, and suggested changes that improved the paper. Alastair Dawson and John Inge Svendsen gave valuable comments to the entry “How the Storegga Tsunami Was Discovered”? Robert I. Tilling reviewed the paper.

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  1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Sogndal, Norway

    Stein Bondevik

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Correspondence to Stein Bondevik .

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  1. Ramtech Ltd., Larkspur, CA, USA

    Robert A. Meyers

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Bondevik, S. (2019). Tsunami from the Storegga Landslide. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_644-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27737-5_644-1

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