EGU21-10908, updated on 28 Sep 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10908 EGU General Assembly 2021 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Source identification of Middle Age extreme event deposits in the Lesser Antilles using forward numerical modeling of tsunami Louise Cordrie1,2, Audrey Gailler1, and Nathalie Feuillet2 1CEA, France (
[email protected]) 2IPGP, Université de Paris, France The arc of the Lesser Antilles is one of the most quiet subduction zone in the world. In this region, the convergence of the Atlantic and the Caribbean plates is low (few mm/year) and most of the seismicity is an intraplate and crustal seismicity. Among the Mw>7 earthquakes recorded in the historical catalog (1690 near Barbuda, 1843 near Guadeloupe, 1867 near the Virgin Islands, 1839 offshore Martinica, 1969 offshore Dominica, 1974 near Antigua), only the 1839 and 1843 events are suspected to be interplate earthquakes. The 1867 Virgin Island earthquake generated an important tsunami with waves of 10m that devastated the closest islands. A tsunami followed the 1843 earthquake but without much damage. These two events are the only known damaging tsunami in this region, but another older one might be added to the list. Indeed, an increasing number of tsunami deposits have been identified in the recent years on several islands of the arc, all of them being around 500 years old (~1450 AD). These deposits are all located in the northern segment of the arc, between Antigua and Puerto-Rico, in Anegada, St-Thomas (Virgin Islands), Anguilla and Scrub islands.