Archival and Discovery of March 2, 1933 Tsunami Event on Marigrams

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information have more than 3,000 tsunami marigram (tide gauge) records in both image and paper format. The majority of these tsunami marigram records were scanned to high-resolution digital tiff images during the NOAA Climate Data Modernization Program (CDMP). There still remain shelves full of deteriorating paper records that are in need of rescue reformatting to scanned images before they are lost. As a follow-up to a successful 2016 BEDI project resulting in the archival and discovery of data held on marigrams during four large tsunamis (1946, 1952, 1960, 1964), marigrams from five additional tsunami events in 1854, 1883, 1896, 1933, and 1968 have been digitized. These additional five tsunami events were generated in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans and are rarely cited in research due to lack of data access. The five tsunami events proposed here for reformat, archive, and discovery in 2017 reside only on these same paper marigram records. Each of these datasets are of great importance as very little digital data exists from tsunamis that occurred during this time period, particularly those prior to the turn of the 20th Century. These events are not only historically important but with new research into tsunami probabilities, are statistically important as well. Similar to seismic hazard analyses, the tsunami community is now focused on tsunami recurrence rates through probabilistic tsunami hazard analysis to support land-use and construction decision-making. As a result, measurements of these tsunamis are not only expected to provide researchers with important information linking earthquake rupture to tsunami generation and propagation characteristics, but will add a significant number of tsunami data points to recurrence rates calculations. All data reformatted as part of this project will be brought into compliance with NOAA Data Directives and meet the requirements for Data Management, Discoverability, Accessibility, Documentation, Readability, and Data Preservation and Stewardship as per the Big Earth Data Initiative (BEDI). BEDI is designed to promote interoperability of Earth observation data across Federal agencies, systems and platforms through the improvement of data management practices and increased discoverability, accessibility, and usability of data collections.