The Chicxulub impact produced a powerful global tsunami

Abstract

An approximately 14-km diameter asteroid is implicated in the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) mass extinction 1 . The bolide impact caused global temperature fluctuations 1 , large aerosol 2 , soot and dust plumes 3 , and wildfires from ejecta re-entering the atmosphere 4,5 . Drilling cores from the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP) and the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program 6 (IODP) revealed the exact physical and geophysical nature of the crater and its peak ring and facilitated the modeling of the impact event 7 . There have been regional tsunami simulations of the impact region of the Chicxulub impact within the Gulf of Mexico by Ward 8 and Matsui et al. 9 Here we present the first global simulation of the Chicxulub impact tsunami from initial contact of the projectile to global propagation using a hydrocode to model the displacement of water, sediment, and crust over the first ten minutes, and a shallow-water ocean model from that point onwards. The tsunami due to the impact and subsequent submarine landslides on the marine shelf 10 was approximately 2700 times more energetic than the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the largest tsunamis in the modern record. Flow velocities exceeded 20 cm/s along shorelines worldwide and disturbed sediments over 6000 km from the impact origin.