Comments page
(You may have to reload this page to see new comments
or modifications to the source paragraph. Also note that the source
section may have been edited since some of these comments were
made.)
Original Paragraph:
[ Modified Mon Sep 20 16:51:29 EDT 2004
]
[ Modified Mon Sep 20 17:00:07 EDT 2004
]
[ Modified Fri Oct 29 02:10:54 EDT 2004
]
[ Modified Fri Oct 29 02:15:02 EDT 2004
]
[ Modified Thu Nov 11 21:15:41 EST 2004
]
[ Modified Thu Nov 11 21:30:03 EST 2004
]
[ Modified Mon Nov 15 14:48:12 EST 2004
]
[ Modified Mon Nov 15 15:00:32 EST 2004
]
Scientists used to dismiss such tales of unusually large
waves as mere folklore, like monsters or mermaids. But with the
proliferation of oil and gas platforms, some of which record wave
data, accumulated observations have finally led to mainstream
acceptance of this seafaring "myth" [Lawton2001]. And recent data
from the European Space Agency's ERS satellites has not only
re-confirmed the existence of these waves, but indicated that
they may be fairly common. Researchers with the MaxWave project
computer-analyzed satellite photos from a three-week period in
2001 during which two ships were hit by 30m rogues. They found
"ten individual giant waves around the globe above 25
metres in height." [ESA2004].
Source: http://seastead.org/commented/paper/ocean.html#_Scientists_used_to_dismiss_such_tales_of_unusuall
Add a comment
Comments:
[Fri Jan 28 01:51:55 EST 2005-27] ThirdHorseman (NOSPAMthirdhorseman@mail.com.NOSPAM):
You might also want to include information about the Semester at Sea ship "Explorer" that was hit on January 26th 2005 by a 50-foot wave in rough Pacific seas 650 miles south of the Aleutian Islands.
While I haven't heard if this was a rogue wave (the weather was severe at the time) it sounds like this wave was much larger than the weather can account for.
The good news, of course, is that this 591-foot ship took the hit dead on and survived with moderate damage. Gives hope for a floating structure designed to handle waves of this intensity.
[Sun Apr 17 18:40:53 EDT 2005-106] Joshua Newman (NOSPAMjoshua.c.newman@gmail.com.NOSPAM):
It should probably be noted that the three week period of observation was not randomly selected; it was chosen specifically to bracket at least two known rogue-wave encounters that took place during a period of stormy weather:
"The [Bremen] incident occured some 950 km north-west of South Georgia, as a Low pressure system rapidly intensified very close to Bremen's position. This resulted in a very tightpressure gradient being generated over the area, and a meteorologist contacted by ANAN estimates that mean wind speeds at the time could have been in the order of 40-50 knots with gusts to 50-65 knots."
(From http://www-old.aad.gov.au/goingsouth/tourism/News/2001/28feb.asp)
"ESA provided us with three weeks' worth of data – around 30,000 separate imagettes – selected around the time that the Bremen and Caledonian Star were struck. The images were processed and automatically searched for extreme waves at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)."
(From http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html)
The incidence of rogue waves may therefore not be as high as the ESA data would imply.
Add a comment:
We'd love to get your feedback. Name and email address are optional.
Email will be listed with the comment, but munged to foil spammers.
Comments may be deleted by the sysadmin.
NEW: If you post a comment, you are giving permission to the author
to publish the comment (credited to whatever name you leave), if they desire.
Currently, all HTML tags are forbidden for security reasons. This
will be improved later.
Back to original paragraph
View all comments on paper/ocean.html for this
day,
week,
month.
Read about the SOCS commenting package