The tsunami observations produced by the 2018 magnitude 7.5 Palu strike‐slip earthquake challenged the traditional basis underlying tsunami hazard assessments and early warning systems. We analyzed an extraordinary collection of 38 amateur and closed circuit television videos to show that the Palu tsunamis devastated widely separated coastal areas around Palu Bay within a few minutes after the mainshock and included wave periods shorter than 100 s missed by the local tide station. Although rupture models based on teleseismic and geodetic data predict up to 5‐m tsunami runups, they cannot explain the higher surveyed runups nor the tsunami waveforms reconstructed from video footage, suggesting either these underestimate actual seafloor deformation and/or that non‐tectonic sources were involved. Post‐tsunami coastline surveys combined with video evidence and modeled tsunami travel times suggest that submarine landslides contributed to tsunami generation. The video‐based observations have broad implications for tsunami hazard assessments, early warning systems, and risk‐reduction planning.

As a preliminary step for assessing the impact of Global Positioning System (GPS) refractive delay data in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, the GPS zenith tropospheric delays (ZTD) are analyzed from 51 permanent GPS sites in the western Mediterranean. The objectives are to estimate the error statistics necessary for future assimilation of GPS ZTD data in numerical models, and to investigate the variability of the data in this area. The time series, which were derived continuously from November 1998 to June 2001, are compared to independent equivalent values derived from radiosonde profiles and the HIRLAM numerical weather prediction model. From over two years of data, the difference between radiosonde and GPS ZTD has a standard deviation of 12 mm of delay and a bias of 7 mm of delay. Some sites have biases as high as 14 mm of delay. The bimodal distribution of residuals, with a higher bias for daytime launches, indicates these biases may be due to radiosonde day-night measurement biases. The biases between the GPS ZTD and HIRLAM estimates are smaller, but the 18 mm ZTD standard deviation is significantly greater. The standard deviation of the residuals depends strongly on the amount of humidity, which produces an annual signal due to the much higher variability of water vapor in the summer months. The better agreement with radiosonde data than HIRLAM estimates indicate that the NWP models will benefit from the additional information provided by GPS. The long term differences between the observational data sources require further study before GPS derived data become useful for climate studies.

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Haiti has been the locus of a number of large and damaging historical earthquakes. The recent 12 January 2010 M w 7.0 earthquake affected cities that were largely unprepared, which resulted in tremendous losses. It was initially assumed that the earthquake ruptured the Enriquillo Plantain Garden fault (EPGF), a major active structure in southern Haiti, known from geodetic measurements and its geomorphic expression to be capable of producing M 7 or larger earthquakes. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data, however, showed that the event ruptured a previously unmapped fault, the Léogâne fault, a north-dipping oblique transpressional fault located immediately north of the EPGF. Following the earthquake, several groups installed temporary seismic stations to record aftershocks, including ocean-bottom seismometers on either side of the EPGF. We use data from the complete set of stations deployed after the event, on land and offshore, to relocate all aftershocks from 10 February to 24 June 2010, determine a 1D regional crustal velocity model, and calculate focal mechanisms. The aftershock locations from the combined dataset clearly delineate the Léogâne fault, with a geometry close to that inferred from geodetic data. Its strike and dip closely agree with the global centroid moment tensor solution of the mainshock but with a steeper dip than inferred from previous finite fault inversions. The aftershocks also delineate a structure with shallower southward dip offshore and to the west of the rupture zone, which could indicate triggered seismicity on the offshore Trois Baies reverse fault. We use first-motion focal mechanisms to clarify the relationship of the fault geometry to the triggered aftershocks.Online Material: Tables of hypocenter locations and focal mechanisms, and Figure showing azimuthal variation with respect to travel-time residuals.