Gloria storm effects on the coastal boulders East of Minorca (Balearic Islands)

The article addresses the analysis of the effects of an extreme marine event, the 2020 storm Gloria, on boulder-field deposits on the eastern coast of Minorca. These deposits were interpreted by the authors as tsunami deposits, formed between the 17th and 19th centuries. Measurements were made of boulders that have been displaced and of the new boulders formed by erosion of the coastal scarp, as well as contrasting all this information with the data of the previous configuration of the boulder fields. These data are complemented with the application of hydrodynamic equations, wave data from buoys and bathymetric profiles in order to verify the limited capacity of even the heaviest storms to modify the position of the boulders in these inland deposits. The Gloria storm, with return periods of more than 200 years, shows the impossibility of moving the thousands of metric blocks to their current positions. Therefore, they require tsunami events such as those that hit these coasts from North Africa.