Most extreme 'rogue wave' ever recorded was so big it's difficult to comprehend

Imagine you’re standing on the deck of a ship in the middle of the ocean. The waves are rough, but it’s the ocean, so you’re used to that feeling. Suddenly, a monstrous wall of water, two or even three times taller than all the other waves, rises up and crashes down – that’s a rogue wave.

These surreal behemoths are so massive and unexpected that for centuries sailors told stories about them that people simply didn’t believe.

That was until 1995, when a freak wave with a height of 85 feet – now known as the Draupner wave – crashed into an oil-drilling platform off the coast of Norway.

This monster became the first scientific evidence that rogue waves were more than just fiction. Now scientists are now trying to understand exactly what makes ocean waves get that big and how often we can expect them.

Understanding the Ucluelet wave

The Draupner wave towered over its neighbors at a staggering 85 feet, as the surrounding waves were 39 feet tall.

In comparison, another enormous rogue wave recorded off the coast of Vancouver Island – known as the Ucluelet wave – was only 58 feet tall in comparison, but it grew to over three times the height of its surrounding waves.

“Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded,” noted physicist Johannes Gemmrich from the University of Victoria.

Such a remarkable size difference has researchers scratching their heads about how these rogue waves form.

The buoy that captured data from the Ucluelet wave was one of many deployed by MarineLabs.

Their mission is to gather more information about the deep-sea hazards that can wreak havoc on marine operations, wind farms, oil rigs, and potentially even beachgoers.

Perils of rogue waves

While neither the Ucluelet nor Draupner waves caused any significant damage, the history books are full of tales of rogue waves causing destruction.

It has even been speculated that several ships which vanished in the 1970s could have been taken down by rogue waves.

With a predicted increase in wave heights in the North Pacific due to climate change, the Ucluelet wave’s record might not stand for long.

Rogue waves can cause serious damage, sinking ships and disrupting marine activities, which is why understanding and predicting them is a big focus in oceanography.

“Capturing this once-in-a-millennium wave, right in our backyard, is a thrilling indicator of the power of coastal intelligence to transform marine safety,” stated MarineLabs CEO Scott Beatty.

The push for improved safety and decision-making in marine operations and coastal communities is an ongoing one.

Rogue waves vs. shore waves

Normal shore waves and rogue waves are like night and day when it comes to their behavior. Shore waves are those predictable, rolling waves you see at the beach.

They’re usually generated by winds blowing over the ocean’s surface and are shaped by the depth and contour of the seabed as they approach land.

These waves arrive in regular intervals, and you can usually see them coming from a distance — great for surfers and beachgoers who like to play it safe.

Rogue waves, on the other hand, are the wildcards of the ocean. As mentioned previously, they don’t follow the usual patterns and can appear suddenly, even in relatively calm seas.

These giants aren’t tied to the shoreline — they can pop up in the open ocean, towering over everything around them.

While shore waves are influenced by steady, consistent factors like wind and tides, rogue waves are the result of chaotic conditions, like multiple waves combining their energy in just the right (or wrong) way.

Antarctica and rogue waves mystery

An expedition by scientists from the University of Melbourne to the waters around Antarctica has uncovered more about the formation of rogue waves.

Their research has found that wind plays a significant role in the formation of these oceanic giants.

The team, led by Professor Alessandro Toffoli, took to the Antarctic waters in 2017, armed with state-of-the-art technology.

With stereo cameras mounted on the South African icebreaker SA Agulhas II, they captured unprecedented insights into rogue waves.

Their three-dimensional imaging of the ocean’s surface provided unique insights into the dynamics of rogue waves.

Critical role of wind

The observations revealed that rogue waves arise during the “young” stage of waves when they are most receptive to the wind.

“The wind creates a chaotic situation where waves of different dimensions and directions coexist,” explained Professor Toffoli.

Wind causes young waves to grow higher, longer and faster. During this self-amplification, a wave grows disproportionately at the expense of its neighbors.”

Nonlinear effects drive size

When waves get larger, they start to interact in more complicated ways. For example, the peak of a wave might get sharper and the trough (the dip between waves) might get shallower.

These changes aren’t just from adding waves together – they’re from the waves physically changing each other. Scientists call these “nonlinear effects,” and they can make big waves even bigger.

At the second level of this kind of theory – called second-order theory – waves can get about five times more intense than the simple models predict.

That means that rogue waves are much more likely than older models thought. But even that doesn’t fully explain the monsters like the Draupner wave.

To get closer to the truth, scientists turn to “fourth-order Stokes theory.” This includes even more complicated interactions between waves, especially when lots of energy builds up in the ocean during storms.

This is where things get especially weird – waves can feed off each other, like bullies ganging up, making one wave grow huge by sucking energy from its neighbors.

This process is called modulational instability, and it helps explain why rogue waves sometimes seem to come out of nowhere.

Predictive tools for rogue waves

The research in the choppy seas of Antarctica has emphasized the need to integrate wind dynamics into predictive models for rogue wave forecasting.

How can we predict these events? That’s where something called crest-trough correlation comes in. It sounds technical, but it’s actually a pretty intuitive idea: it measures how closely the highest parts (crests) of the waves are related to the lowest parts (troughs).

When this correlation is strong, the waves tend to form in tight groups – like a pack of waves with one or two giants in the middle. These “groupy” sea states are perfect for rogue waves.

The cool part? Crest-trough correlation can be calculated using existing weather and wave models. That means we might be able to add rogue wave risk forecasts to the same kinds of systems that predict weather or ocean currents.

Advancing our knowledge of rogue waves and their connection to wind dynamics opens up a world of possibilities for improving predictive tools in ocean safety.

By incorporating wind data into forecasting models, we can enhance our ability to anticipate and prepare for these formidable natural phenomena.

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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