On the source of the 6 February 2023 tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean

On 6 February 2023 the region between southern Türkiye and northern Syria was hit by a devastating earthquake sequence, starting with a Mw = 7.8 event at 01:17:34 UTC on the Eastern Anatolian Fault, followed by a Mw = 7.5 at 10:24:29 UTC and a large number of aftershocks. Both events were accompanied by many different coseismic and secondary effects, including a modest tsunami following the first mainshock recorded by a few Tide Gauges (TGs) in the eastern Mediterranean. In this work, we aim to constrain the nature and location of the tsunami source through numerical simulations. Submarine landslide sources are investigated, using a combination of two Gaussian functions with opposite polarity as the analytical initial condition. Several hypotheses regarding the source are tested using the numerical code JAGURS. The results of the simulations are compared to the available TGs, allowing for the identification of a source area capable of reproducing some key features of the observed TG records during the first minutes following the tsunami’s arrival. The hypothesis suggests that a complex generating mechanism is involved, combining the action of a submarine landslide with sources of different nature.