'Rogue waves' reported by mariners get scientific backing

From: Chwee Chua (chwee@stanfordalumni.org-DeleteThis.com)
Date: Fri Jul 23 2004 - 01:25:02 PDT

Next message: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
Previous message: Greg Harris: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
In reply to: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Flying Tigers Access"
Next in thread: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Mail actions: [ respond to this message ] [ mail a new topic ]

Message-Id: <6.1.0.6.2.20040723012315.02d52ae0@pop.singnet.com.sg-DeleteThis.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 01:25:02 -0700
To: Multiple recipients of list WIND_TALK <wind_talk@opus.labs.agilent.com-DeleteThis.com>
From: Chwee Chua <chwee@stanfordalumni.org-DeleteThis.com>
Subject: 'Rogue waves' reported by mariners get scientific backing
In-Reply-To: <126.4632a4b8.2e315443@aol.com-DeleteThis.com>
References: <126.4632a4b8.2e315443@aol.com-DeleteThis.com>

PARIS (AFP) - 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). Around 30,000 separate "imagettes" were taken by the two satellites
in a three-week project, MaxWave, that was carried out in 2001.

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.

The waves exist "in higher numbers than anyone expected," said Wolfgang
Rosenthal, senior scientist with the GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht,
Germany, who pored over the data. "The next step is to analyse if they can
be forecasted," he said.

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 (news -
web sites) 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."

In the next phase of research, a project called Wave Atlas will use two
years of "imagettes" to create a worldwide atlas of rogue wave events and
carry out statistical analyses, ESA said. The goal is to find out how these
strange, cataclysmic phenomena may be generated by ocean eddies and
currents or by the collision of weather fronts, and which regions of the
seas may be most at risk.

Finding out could help ship architects and the designers of oil rigs and
their operators to skirt the menace.

Next message: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
Previous message: Greg Harris: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
In reply to: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Flying Tigers Access"
Next in thread: Eyes4Hire@aol.com-DeleteThis.com: "Re: Flying Tigers Access"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Mail actions: [ respond to this message ] [ mail a new topic ]

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Mar 26 2005 - 11:57:55 PST