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| Satellites verify rogue wave existence |
| 2004-07-23 |
| Edited for brevity. Hat tip: Hell in a Handbasket European satellites have given confirmation to terrified mariners who describe seeing freak waves as tall as 10-storey buildings, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. "Rogue waves" have been the anecdotal cause behind scores of sinkings of vessels as large as container ships and supertankers over the past two decades. But evidence to support this has been sketchy, and many marine scientists have clung to statistical models that say monstrous deviations from the normal sea state only occur once every thousand years. Testing this promise, ESA tasked two of its Earth-scanning satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, to monitor the oceans with their radar. The radars send back "imagettes" -- a picture of the sea surface in a rectangle measuring 10 by five kilometers (six by 2.5 miles) that is taken every 200 kms (120 miles). Even though the research period was brief, the satellites identified more than 10 individual giant waves around the globe that measured more than 25 metres (81.25 feet) in height, ESA said in a press release. Ironically, the research coincided with two "rogue wave" incidents in which two tourist cruisers, the Bremen and the Caledonian Star, had their bridge windows smashed by 30-metre (100-feet) monsters in the South Atlantic. The Bremen was left drifting without navigation or propulsion for two hours after the hit. In 1995, the British cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II encountered a 29-metre (94.25-feet) wall of water during a hurricane in the North Atlantic. Its captain, Ronald Warwick, likened it to "the White Cliffs of Dover." |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #7 Discover magazine had an excellent article on this about month or so ago.American scientist had developed theory on how super waves formed and tested successfully in Norwegian wave-making tank,over intense scepticism. |
| Posted by: Stephen 2004-07-24 12:04:28 AM |
| #6 When whales fart... |
| Posted by: borgboy 2004-07-23 10:04:38 PM |
| #5 Rogue Wave - South Atlantic? What about seismic activity on the Mid-Atlantic ridge creating Tsunamis? Let's avoid Tristan da Cunha then. . . . |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-07-23 5:57:03 PM |
| #4 Wave heights for April 2003 here: Link |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2004-07-23 4:46:08 PM |
| #3 We don't like the term "rogue wave", it is way to negative. The prefered term is Wave of Generous Proportions or WOG P. |
| Posted by: All That Salt Water 2004-07-23 1:34:41 PM |
| #2 Ironically, the research coincided with two "rogue wave" incidents in which two tourist cruisers, the Bremen and the Caledonian Star, had their bridge windows smashed by 30-metre (100-feet) monsters in the South Atlantic. I saw a story on this on one of the Discovery channels a while back. Seems like when you have chaotic wave conditions, as opposed to long swells, on rare occasions the waves can add their force together and produce a single monster. They don't last very long, but they get huge. |
| Posted by: Steve 2004-07-23 11:43:27 AM |
| #1 The scary thing about the article I saw on the Space.Com site was the fact that 2 large vessels sink on average every week |
| Posted by: cheaderhead 2004-07-23 11:17:09 AM |
