The conundrum of submarine slide generation and tsunami risk in the northern North Atlantic region

Approximately 8,150 years ago a large tsunami was generated by one of the world’s largest submarine slides (the Storegga slide) that took place on the Norwegian continental slope. Since numerous submarine sediment slides occur along the Norwegian continental margin and most are not dated, many have speculated that other large tsunamis must have taken place across the northern North Atlantic in the past. This chain of reasoning naturally leads to the question, ‘what is the probability of occurrence of a future submarine slide-generated tsunami in the North Atlantic region?’.

In the talk, a series of arguments related to the origin of the Holocene Storegga Slide are used to identify the East Greenland continental margin as a candidate area for future tsunami generation.