Tsunami warning agreement with Portugal

Miguel Miranda, President of the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute and Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo signed an agreement on the provision of data from International Monitoring System (IMS) stations to the Institute for tsunami warning purposes. Portugal is the 14th country to have signed a tsunami warning agreement with the CTBTO (the others being Australia, France Greece, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Turkey, Russia and the United States).

These agreements enable tsunami warning centres around the globe to receive in near real time data from around 100 IMS stations in high tsunami risk areas.

These data help to issue more timely and precise warnings in case of a tsunami. Contributing to tsunami warning is one of the many civil and scientific uses of IMS data.

Portugal hosts three IMS monitoring stations: hydroacoustic station HA07 on Flores, radionuclide station RN53 and infrasound station IS42, both on the Azores.