2/03/2025

'' LA PALMA'S MEGATSUNAMI '' : NETFLIX SERIES REVIEW


Netflix's La Palma's ' megatsunami ' scenario has been debunked. ' Getting The Science Right. '

In the Netflix series La Palma, a Norwegian family goes on holiday to the Canary Islands, when a young researcher discovers alarming signs of an imminent volcanic eruption.

Cumbre Vieja is an active volcano on La Palma that last erupted in 2021. The series culminates in a '' megatsunami '', capable of engulfing Europe and reaching as far as the west coast of the US.

It's a truly terrifying prospect.

Disaster stories are hugely popular and La Palma is just the latest hit in the growing genre. In his book Disaster Mon Amour, the film critic David Thomson identifies the filmmakers' goal of creating '' a spectacle of devastation with cozy human interest.'' But stories like La Palma can have a real world impact.

The series presents itself as being based on a real hypothesis, which is communicated by newscasters and a scientist in the title sequence of each episode.

The tsunami expert Simon Day, whose research inspired the show, is also thanked in the closing credits. However, La Palma does nothing to capture the more-up-to-date and reassuring science.

While volcanic events can trigger tsunamis, as experts in volcanoes and the communication of disaster, we can assure you that the eruption and subsequent rapid collapse of the island depicted in the series isn't a plausible scenario that scientists are concerned about.

What should be taken more seriously are localised tsunamis. Such ''megatsunami'' scenarios have been debunked in recent years, you'll be happy to hear. There have been more than 17 eruptions in the Canary Islands since the 1400s, none resulting in a ''megatsunami'' across the Atlantic.

Stories have the power to communicate information about environmental risk for audiences. Following the release of the film, some have dug up the megatsunami hypothesis, raising it back into the public awareness.

The idea of a ''megatsunami'', triggered in the way it is in La Palma, first arose in a 2001 paper by the academic the series thanks in its credits - Simon Day - and the geophysicist Steven Ward, based on one extreme hypothetical scenario.

This theory has since been proven false by subsequent studies that show that a Canary Islands eruption and collapse might reach the US with a maximum wave height similar to a storm surge, at one to two metres, not the 25-metre waves depicted in La Palma.

Newer research has also called into question the scale of the landslide used in the original study, which would cause such a tsunami.

The World Students Society thanks :

Hannah Little, a lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

Janine Krippner is an Honorary Research Associate in Volcanology/matai puia at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

Katy Chamberlain is a lecturer in Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

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