For those interested in this topic, The Wave by Susan Casey https://susancasey.com/books-list/the-wave is an entertaining read, alternating between accounts of surfers following the waves and history of various waves. Some science of various resonances and chaotic systems is discussed but all too briefly.
The most interesting part of her documentary book for me was the fairly recent event of 1740 foot/~550 meter tall tsunami wave that generated by a mountain breaking and falling into the sea as result of serious earthquake in Alaska, and 1 (one) person who survived riding on it in his boat. Truly an epic wall of wate that was measured for us by the high watermark of the broken trees on the surrounding mountains.
> the fairly recent event of 1740 foot/~550 meter tall tsunami wave
This isn't exactly true. The ~550 meter height corresponds to the height up to which trees were cleared. However, the tsunami was created by a massive landslide in a contained bay, which pushed the water uphill much like someone falling in a filled tub can push water up the walls.
I'm surprised someone tried to estimate that this is one-in-1300 years event when we don't know how they form, have no data on them, don't know much about those waves.
If you start measuring something (wave height) and detect a high value in, say, the first year, you better have a very good reason the think the event happens every 1000 years. Especially if you are measuring a few points in a very large ocean.
The buoy was in for at most a handful of years, and catches a 1-in-1300 year event in that one location?
The first thought on that should not be "what incredible luck!", but "is there something special about this location, or is that 1-in-1300 estimate off?".
The nomenclature of 1 in x years is based on statistics and equates to the chance, 1/x, that in a given year this event will happen. You don't need 1300 years of data to say this was a 1 in 1300 year event, but you can say that this event had a 1/1300=7.6^-4 chance of happening in a given year. And that can be calculated based on any amount of data. Of course, more data will give a higher confidence to the statement.
> we don't know how they form, have no data on them, don't know much about those waves
We know a surprising amount about their mechanics due to replication in the lab [1][2]. We don't have lots of observational evidence to support the lab effects accurately replicating the ocean, but I don't think we've generally seen evidence for lab surface water materially differing from ocean surface water.
Are rogue waves just the various component waves on different frequencies lining up "perfectly" such that they sum to one large wave? Or are they a different phenomena?
only kind of, the suprising thing is they are way bigger than expected (or rather, rogue waves of a given height are orders of magnitude more likely than you would expect from just adding together the statistics of each frequency of wave). There's some other interaction or non-linear behaviour going on which causes them to occur with the frequency that they do, and I don't think there's a single model which actually explains them.
No one really knows what causes them - plenty of theories but not facts - and that's why they are both exceptionally facinating as to how they form, and yet also utterly terrifying.
I'm sorry but this reeks of made up bullshit for TV on a show that would be notoriously boring if not for invented drama. I'm sure they took a wave but I don't see any evidence that it was a rogue wave.
I sail in the area and would be more worried about shipping traffic and submerged/lost trees or shipping containers. Hope you all get to make the trip someday, on my list as well
I don't understand this article. It says at the beginning:
```
In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet).
The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.
```
However, right below that, it says:
```
It wasn't until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway.
> the one that surfaced near Ucluelet, Vancouver Island was not the tallest, its relative size compared to the waves around it was unprecedented.
>Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.
The one in Norway was only roughly double the height of surrounding waves.
The resolution is that the absolute rogue-wave-height isn't the measure of extreme, it's the rogue-wave-height relative to the typical height. This is explained in TFA if you read carefully.
> Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.
as the article says, it's "most extreme" with respect to its size compared to the surrounding waves: "the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of its peers."
I thought this book was decent, and I don't know of any others better in the niche, but I wanted a bit more science than was presented. I think Casey got too intimidated by the scientists to really try to understand the models at all, and then spent too much time fawning over Laird Hamilton. But perhaps that was a decision made by the editors rather than by Casey navigating two very different groups of protagonists.
-- having trouble picturing this - from a distance it look like a massive wall of water floating along on its own? - waves go up and down so why doesnt the masive wave going down change the amplitude of the waves in advance of it? - so confusing try to picture - the animation in the article didn't help --
Short, non-technical answer: These waves are actually the "sum" of a number of different waves (of different frequency and/or phases). It can happen that many of these _usually_ cancel each other out in the sum, but once in a blue moon, their peaks happen at virtually the same time. Then you get one massive pulse. The moments right before and after could look quite normal.
In the video they show the full animation with the surrounding wave context and it makes it a little easier to understand than the gif.
The first massive wave lumbers through at the same pace of the surrounding waves leaving you thinking "Oh that big wave is the rogue wave" when suddenly the bottom drops out and an even more massive wave comes very fast and seemingly overtakes the slower one. It seems like the slower large wave just stops in place and reduces in amplitude while the rogue wave overtakes it.
Not sure if this is what you mean but there's a documentary out there called 100 Foot Wave that has tons of video footage of gigantic waves. It's about surfing, so these waves break, but it's worth a watch if you'd like to see these things in action. The images of the waves are awe inspiring, even on a TV screen.
Aircraft carriers are gigantic and are designed to be stable. I’ve never been on the largest ones, but as a Marine I was on the Essex (a smaller carrier for jump jets and helicopters) and we sailed basically directly through a typhoon. The ship was pretty stable, pitching about 10 degrees from side to side. Enough to make some experienced sailors toss their lunch, and even if there was no wind, I think it would have been very treacherous to do flight ops with the deck pitching like that.
For fixed wing jets that need to land on deck… even if you ignored the wind that goes along with these conditions, I think recovering aircraft would be too great a risk. That does bring up the wind and visibility that (almost always) goes along with these extreme sea states, which would be probably just as hazardous as the deck pitching about to flight ops.
For basically everything else, I think the naval systems work just fine in bad weather.
In regards to rogue waves, an 85 foot wave would put green water on the flight deck of the carrier I was on, something that would be difficult to imagine for me. Aircraft on the flight deck are chained down with multiple chains, each of the chains having the strength to hold the entire aircraft down, so I can’t imagine losing aircraft, but flooding the planes with sea water probably wouldn’t be good for them.
[+] [-] danielodievich|3 years ago|reply
The most interesting part of her documentary book for me was the fairly recent event of 1740 foot/~550 meter tall tsunami wave that generated by a mountain breaking and falling into the sea as result of serious earthquake in Alaska, and 1 (one) person who survived riding on it in his boat. Truly an epic wall of wate that was measured for us by the high watermark of the broken trees on the surrounding mountains.
[+] [-] simplotek|3 years ago|reply
This isn't exactly true. The ~550 meter height corresponds to the height up to which trees were cleared. However, the tsunami was created by a massive landslide in a contained bay, which pushed the water uphill much like someone falling in a filled tub can push water up the walls.
[+] [-] gregoriol|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njarboe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toss1|3 years ago|reply
The buoy was in for at most a handful of years, and catches a 1-in-1300 year event in that one location?
The first thought on that should not be "what incredible luck!", but "is there something special about this location, or is that 1-in-1300 estimate off?".
[+] [-] takk309|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
We know a surprising amount about their mechanics due to replication in the lab [1][2]. We don't have lots of observational evidence to support the lab effects accurately replicating the ocean, but I don't think we've generally seen evidence for lab surface water materially differing from ocean surface water.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave
[2] https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/70...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] genderwhy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcxdude|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianvisits|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _whiteCaps_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kposehn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 93po|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legohead|3 years ago|reply
> The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.
Video says it was a 5-story wave.. "60 feet", article's wave was 58 feet.
[+] [-] latchkey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glonq|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worik|3 years ago|reply
The bottom may be exposed by the trough
They may crest breaking over your boat smashing it
In confined waters maintaining heading may not be possible, which is critical
[+] [-] dieselgate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pclark|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CapmCrackaWaka|3 years ago|reply
```
In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet).
The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.
```
However, right below that, it says:
```
It wasn't until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway.
```
New wave is 58 feet, wave in 1995 is 85 feet?
[+] [-] PopAlongKid|3 years ago|reply
>Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.
The one in Norway was only roughly double the height of surrounding waves.
[+] [-] mturmon|3 years ago|reply
The resolution is that the absolute rogue-wave-height isn't the measure of extreme, it's the rogue-wave-height relative to the typical height. This is explained in TFA if you read carefully.
> Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall.
And of course this makes sense.
[+] [-] whycome|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristjankalm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Jabbles|3 years ago|reply
Do they mean per-buoy? Or what?
[+] [-] worik|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kldavis4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cossatot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrBazza|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pigtailgirl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownawaydad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rightbyte|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 420official|3 years ago|reply
The first massive wave lumbers through at the same pace of the surrounding waves leaving you thinking "Oh that big wave is the rogue wave" when suddenly the bottom drops out and an even more massive wave comes very fast and seemingly overtakes the slower one. It seems like the slower large wave just stops in place and reduces in amplitude while the rogue wave overtakes it.
[+] [-] dclowd9901|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] korse|3 years ago|reply
Take it however you want, but the stated goal is still valid and we have the technology.
https://archive.org/details/filk_fire_in_the_sky/14+Waveride...
[+] [-] GalenErso|3 years ago|reply
How can an aircraft carrier launch and recover planes if it's being rocked by waves?
How can a destroyer launch missiles from vertical launch cells if waves are constantly crashing on the deck?
I wonder how a Navy made up entirely of nuclear submarines would fare against a more diverse force with an equal number of hulls.
[+] [-] MarkMarine|3 years ago|reply
For fixed wing jets that need to land on deck… even if you ignored the wind that goes along with these conditions, I think recovering aircraft would be too great a risk. That does bring up the wind and visibility that (almost always) goes along with these extreme sea states, which would be probably just as hazardous as the deck pitching about to flight ops.
For basically everything else, I think the naval systems work just fine in bad weather.
In regards to rogue waves, an 85 foot wave would put green water on the flight deck of the carrier I was on, something that would be difficult to imagine for me. Aircraft on the flight deck are chained down with multiple chains, each of the chains having the strength to hold the entire aircraft down, so I can’t imagine losing aircraft, but flooding the planes with sea water probably wouldn’t be good for them.
[+] [-] vkou|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whycome|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _whiteCaps_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matrix12|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinglymintyfrsh|3 years ago|reply
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25965-7-rogue-wave-di...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rogue_waves