IT IS straight out of a nightmare: a wave almost 100ft high bears down on your helpless vessel miles from the safety of the shore.
But that is exactly what a team of British scientists faced while conducting experiments off the west coast of Scotland.
[…]
The significance of the Rockall event is that the height of the sea was measured by an onboard wave recorder, making it officially the biggest ever.
The NOC’s boat, RSS Discovery, a successor vessel to Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, was stranded by storms for five days, with waves averaging 61ft. Wind speeds hit the severe gale category.
The 295ft-long vessel was in the area to conduct experiments on global warming, but the onboard instruments were also capable of accurately measuring wave height.
Holliday said: “Very strong winds are common here all the year round. The point is that all of these previously high measured waves were under hurricane conditions – really extreme conditions, but our big waves weren’t. These are not especially unusual conditions. It wasn’t just a one-off.”
The event happened in 2000, but was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters Journal.
The researchers believe the discovery of such a huge wave amid relatively low, non-hurricane wind speeds could have implications for oil exploration on Britain’s Atlantic shelf.
Holliday believes the extreme waves were caused by a resonance effect.
It occurs when the wind velocity matches the speed of the waves, resulting in wind continually feeding energy into the sea.
She said: “Energy was continually being put into this wave group. This was pretty close to the maximum height that the waves could have got to. This is the edge of the Atlantic Shelf where a lot of exploration is going on.
“These new figures are going to be quite significant. Engineers who are trying to design ships and oil platforms will have to think again.”
Emphasis mine. It’s another story that features what appear to be qualified researchers who are seemingly unaware of duplicate research in their own or related fields. It’s a phenomenon I first came across in the course of breeding dogs and tracking developments in genetic research – often, breeders have a better grasp on the current state of research in their breeds than the veterinary specialists they consult.
In July of 2004, I mentioned this item, “Seas Awash With Monster Waves”
Rogue waves that rise as high as 10-storey buildings and can sink large ships are far more common than previously thought, satellite images show.
Two European Space Agency (ESA) satellites have monitored the world’s oceans to test the frequency of monster waves that were once dismissed as a nautical myth.
Three weeks of data from the early months of 2001 showed more than 10 individual giant waves around the globe over 25 metres high.
Previously, ESA said, scientists believed that such large waves occurred only once every 10,000 years.
“Having proved they existed in higher numbers than anyone expected, the next step is to analyse if they can be forecasted,” said Dr Wolfgang Rosenthal, a scientist at the GKSS research centre in Geesthacht, Germany.
One would think the existence of well-publicized data such as this would preclude statements that claim “discovery” – especially in an era when simply entering the words “monster waves” into a Google search can pull up multiple references.
Me thinks the Glenlivet is being passed around too liberally these days.
Me thinks the Glenlivet is being passed around too liberally these days.
…reminds me of a ‘study’ done on how ships sunk around the Bermuda triangle. They said gas seeping up would hit a ship in the middle, lifting it and effectively breaking it’s back.
What’s that got to do with 100′ waves? Well ships designed to plow through these waves would have to also deal with having half of it hanging into space on the other side.
The weight factor must be exerting tremendous stress on the backbone of the ship as it breaks out of the wave.
Tomax, the methane gas seeping up from the ocean floor doesn’t lift and break the back of a boat. What it does is lowers the density of the water and hence lowers the buoyancy of the boat. If the weight of the boat exceeds the buoyancy, then the boat sinks, and fast.
What ever causes a ship to sink is a worry only sailors and their families have. Since damn near drowning in Tobin lake in 1976, you’d be hard pressed to catch me on ANY craft on water! Build ships as big and mighty as you please, your wits matched against Mother Nature are gonna lose. I’ve heard that the north Atlantic, especially around Scotland is a bad place to be and with this news about a giant wave, one would think that people would be having second thoughts about placing their lives in danger in the name of “research”. Only the brave and foolhardy…
We believe we know about Mother Earth and yet our conventional wisdom doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. There’s some scientists who are convinced 100 years of using hydrocarbon fuels is causing global warming. They’re waving their hands, screaming “The sky is falling!!” and nothing can dissuade them.
Ed, right, sorry, I forgot to mention that part where buoyancy of the water is compromised by the gas, now I remember it.
The gas bubble coming up near the middle of the ship causes it to break it in half because that part of the ship became less buoyant whereas the front and back of the ship is more buoyant thereby causing it to almost “fold” in the water or break it’s back (keel?).
…anyway, the point was a ship has to be flexible to survive those kinds of waves. Depending on the cycle of waves, that’s a lot of bending to take either going into or coming over or through the wave.
Like a torpedo is designed to explode below a boat to break its back. Exploding below will sink a boat faster than if it blows up from hitting the boat.
Kate, this post is excellent and so is SDA.
Now I can get all my poli-geek, sci-geek, debate, and moonbattery entertainment all in one place.
Thanks!
Mac: I totally agree.
Steve
I found one comment very interesting.
“The researchers believe the discovery of such a huge wave amid relatively low, non-hurricane wind speeds could have implications for oil exploration on Britain’s Atlantic shelf.”
Maybe researchers should be going about this a totally different way. Instead of looking at implications to oil exploration look at harnessing the energy from these waves as an alternative energy source. Why not look for the silver lining.
Reading this article brings me back to this Norwegian couple presently sailing their Contessa 26 around the world. They are now in the Caribbean.
http://www.freewebs.com/sybika-eng/index.htm
There is also the well documented wave that hit the liner Queen Elizabeth II just over 10 years ago:
“”At 0410 the rogue wave was sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness from 220�, it looked as though the ship was heading straight for the white cliffs of Dover. The wave seemed to take ages to arrive but it was probably less than a minute before it broke with tremendous force over the bow. An incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later by two smaller shudders. There seemed to be two waves in succession as the ship fell into the ‘hole’ behind the first one. The second wave of 28-29 m (period 13 seconds), whilst breaking, crashed over the foredeck, carrying away the forward whistle mast.”
…..
“Captain Warwick admits that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the height of a wave, but in this case the crest was more or less level with the line of sight for those on the bridge, about 29 m above the surface; additionally, the officers on the bridge confirmed that it was definitely not a swell wave. The presence of extreme waves was also recorded by Canadian weather buoys moored in the area, and the maximum measured height from buoy 44141 was 30 m (98 feet.)”
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf109/sf109p11.htm
Like global warming its aonther big time farce and fruad the biggist hoax since PILTDOWN MAN and HITLERS DIARIES