New Software Could Warn Sailors of Rogue Waves

Reservoir Hill writes "Sailors have been telling stories for centuries about monstrous ocean waves that tower over a hundred feet in the air and toss ships around like corks. While these were once dismissed as nautical myth, but a few years back synthetic aperture radar from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the existence of these 'rogue' waves and study their origins. Such waves were far more common than anyone had expected. Now a researcher in Madrid has developed software that can detect rogue waves from radar images, with the possibility of providing advance warning to ships at sea. The software uses a mathematical model to evaluate and process the spatial and temporal dimensions of waves inferred from the interaction between the radar's electromagnetic energy and the sea surface. The result is displayed in a color-coded image."

Comments

This is hardly new...

[3waygeek]

Rogue Wave Software has existed since 1989.

Re:But can it Warn Sailors of icebergs?

[FireNWater]

Only rogue icebergs. . .

Yes, its called..

[eniac42]

Avasta, SP1, me mateys! Shiver me timbers, look at that wave! Arrrrr!

Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[tjstork]

The subtext of this article is amazing. Basically, sailors have been out there getting killed by giant waves for decades, but a bunch of scientists decreed that such waves could not exist, and therefor, everything from safety standards, to engineering, to the ships themselves, were all designed in line with what was predicted, but not what was observed. During this entire time, numerous eye witness reports were ignored, and even the odd photograph was dismissed as a fluke.

I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate, when, 2 ships a week have been sinking now for decades (on average), that, there's eyewitnesses that have said what caused these sinkings, and instead, ignored them. If there's a smoking gun that says that scientists find what they want to find, and its not necessarily the truth, then this is it, and the only way to save science is to demand that science must act scientific.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[theNote]

Obligatory rogue wave video from Deadliest Catch on Discovery channel:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l_8hOai9hGQ

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The scientists made their decisions on objective data but weren't convinced by anecdotal evidence. In other words science worked just as it's supposed to work.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Splab]

What about numerous UFO observations, Loch Ness etc? are you suggestion those should be regarded as proof of existence since there have been numerous observations and murky photographs? Science works by being skeptical, yes it can take decades for something to be acknowledged and that might be bad but taking every observation as proof would be worse.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Colin Smith]

I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution Don't tell me. You're still younger than 25 years old.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Jarjarthejedi]

Last time I checked there aren't 2 deaths a year from UFOs, or reportedly from UFOs. Sure there's somewhat of a correlation, but when people are dying semi-commonly (I figure 2 deaths a year means 1 ship sunk every 5 years or so) that's when you should be looking into the subject, not simply ignoring it and saying it's not possible and that the photos are proof of nothing.

The scientists aren't fully to blame for the fact that these waves were so long thought impossible, but neither are they completely blameless, they were so set in their ways that they couldn't see any way such a wave could exist, and that's a problem. In other words it's not bad to say that these waves, or UFOs, probably don't exist, but it is a problem to say that there's no possible way such a phenomenon could happen. As Douglas Adams once postulated (paraphrasing a good amount) 'the difference between something that's unlikely and something that's impossible is that, when you find out the impossible thing can actually happen you look a lot worse than the statistically unlikely thing'

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Jarjarthejedi]

And yet at the same time science is supposed to investigate anecdotal matters, or at least that's where most of our scientific understanding has come from. Most leaps forward are not preceded by large quantities of statistical evidence, but rather one or two anecdotal happenings that someone gets curious about and decides to investigate. Sure, the scientists did all that was expected of them, they examined their evidence and found that these waves were impossible according to what they'd observed. However from what I've seen and heard this was treated as another case of one group of scientists saying something's impossible and other groups simply accepting their findings as fact without examining them or gathering their own data. As they say, hindsight is 20/20, but that doesn't mean the scientists shouldn't have studied the subject a little more before making their statements.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[eebra82]

[..] therefor, everything from safety standards, to engineering, to the ships themselves, were all designed in line with what was predicted, but not what was observed. I think you're missing the point. It's not about altering ships to handle huge waves, but instead to warn them in advance. For instance, crew could get off the deck in time and the captain would have time to change its direction to match that of the wave.

I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate, when, 2 ships a week have been sinking now for decades (on average), that, there's eyewitnesses that have said what caused these sinkings, and instead, ignored them. Ignored what exactly? The article states that "severe weather has sunk more than 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 metres in length during the last two decades. There's no data on how many of these ships actually sunk from a super wave. In fact, the number could be so small that it's not even worth our time. More importantly, most of these accidents happen to really old boats.

Last but not least, there are many eyewitnesses who claim to have spotted UFOs, been exposed to abductions, seen the Loch Ness monster and whatnot. You need credible evidence before you start spending billions of dollars on altering ship designs.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[m2943]

Basically, sailors have been out there getting killed by giant waves for decades, but a bunch of scientists decreed that such waves could not exist, and therefor, everything from safety standards, to engineering, to the ships themselves, were all designed in line with what was predicted, but not what was observed

Yes, engineering and safety standards are based on objective evidence, not anecdotal reports. That is the way it should be. Sometimes people's hunches and anecdotes are proven right in retrospect, often, they are proven wrong.

I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate

I'm sorry you don't understand the purpose of academic or scientific institutions; you are not supposed to "trust" them, you are supposed to look at their evidence and conclusions and then rationally formulate a policy based on it.

If there's a smoking gun that says that scientists find what they want to find, and its not necessarily the truth

Of course, it's "not necessarily the truth". Scientists make hypotheses and inferences based on data, and those are always subject to change.

The best scientific evidence right now says that anthropogenic climate change is happening. That scientific hypothesis may turn out to be wrong, but no alternative hypothesis is even remotely as plausible.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[UbuntuDupe]

I'm sorry you don't understand the purpose of academic or scientific institutions; you are not supposed to "trust" them, you are supposed to look at their evidence and conclusions and then rationally formulate a policy based on it.

Yes, that's how it's supposed to work, but the GP is right that in practice, we are asked to base policies on our trust of them. Remember, people like Al Gore say, "Do this policy, because the scientific consensus in this area." He does not say,

"Do this policy, because this group of scientists has consistently been able to formulate correct, falsfiable, non-trivial, useful predictions, using a model that you can download at this website, and for which you can easily trace every assumption going into it, to its original scientific basis." (or any shorter version of that)

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[Dunbal]

What about numerous UFO observations, Loch Ness etc? are you suggestion those should be regarded as proof of existence since there have been numerous observations and murky photographs? Science works by being skeptical, yes it can take decades for something to be acknowledged and that might be bad but taking every observation as proof would be worse.

      Especially since the original perpetrator of the "Loch Ness Monster" hoax publicly admitted to it about 20 years ago in the UK, just before dying. Along with his admission was an apology, and what made him cough up the truth was seeing all the boats gathered with sonar equipment to finally, once and for all, put this myth to rest. He said he was ashamed that so many people had invested so much money for this.

      But people love to believe bullshit, and even though this made the news in the UK at the time (I watched it), people still perpetrate the "Loch Ness Monster" BS. Don't even get me started on UFOs.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[zippthorne]

My recollection may be poor, but I don't remember scientists actually saying rogue waves can't exist. I do remember they said they couldn't model them using the linearized CFD simulations that had become popular, and when processing power finally grew to the point where they could cross fewer terms off of the ol' Navier-Stokes equations, they found something that resembled rogue waves in the results.

I suspect this is a case where one group of scientists or engineers misinterpreted or exaggerated the results of another group of scientists and engineers.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[0xdeadbeef]

I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy, regarding climate,

And don't forget evolution! Those scientists, with all their theories, undermining honest God-fearing values! Have they ever seen anything evolve? No!

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[ricree]

they were so set in their ways that they couldn't see any way such a wave could exit Except that scientists actually looked at the evidence and eventually found that they did exist. So how exactly were they "set in their waves". They did what they were supposed to do. They looked at a reported phenomenon and skeptically investigated it until they were able to determine one way or another whether it actually existed. Then once there was actually something to study, they set out to understanding what was actually going on. Please tell me what exactly they should have done differently here.

Would saying "ok, I believe you" without any evidence or understanding actually have saved any of the lives lost?

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[jcr]

Oh, my god. If I ever saw something like that at sea, I'd have a hard time facing a swimming pool after that.

-jcr

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[ozbird]

When you look at some of the flag-on-convenience rust buckets plying the oceans, the fact that some never make it isn't too hard to believe without invoking rogue waves, kraken etc. - Occam's razor.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[thejuggler]

I used to be in the US Navy. I did face a wave like that and bigger. We took a 70+ foot wave, bow first thankfully, while riding the front of a massive January storm somewhere off the coast of Oregon. I was on an FFG which can handle a wave that size much better than a fishing boat, but it was still one heck of a ride.

A few years back I was watching an episode on one of the Discovery network channels about some oceanic researches. Their research ship was hit by a rouge wave. It was then when scientists actually got hit by one that they started thinking of sailors accounts of rouge waves as credible. Damn pointed head morons. It took slapping them in the face with a giant wave for them to believe they existed.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[flyingsquid]

Speaking as a scientist, and as a sailor with a couple decades worth of experience on the North Pacific, go to hell.

Yeah, science is pretty far from perfect. We scientists can be arrogant, quick to trust our theories and to disregard experience, and we make mistakes. We are, in other words, human. But scientists have also given us vastly improved navigational technology. Radar lets you see where the land is, through darkness, rain, and fog, to avoid hitting coasts and other ships. Loran, and now GPS, gave ships the ability to see precisely where they are. Ship-to-ship radio communication made it possible for ships to radio for help when they were in distress. EPIRBs (emergency position indicating radio beacon) allow ships to send distress calls over a satellite network to the Coast Guard and send precise information on their location.

The end result? Being on the water isn't safe, it never has been, and it never will be. The ocean is an unpredictable and dangerous thing. But thanks to these scientific advances, it's much, much safer today than it was just twenty or thirty years ago.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[eebra82]

I would think sailors would be credible. That's the thing. You put sailors into same camp as UFO believers, but really, they are subject matter experts when it comes to the water. Really, that someone never went and bothered to really check the sailor's claims of giant waves for decades just tells me that "credible evidence" as you call it is just an excuse for laziness in the discipline. You don't have to be an expert to know that you're being probed anally by an alien. Same goes for enormous waves - you'd have to be pretty stupid not to recognize that a 100 foot wave is something out of the ordinary. My point is, sailors should be trusted as much as UFO believers until there is credible evidence. And by credible evidence, I am not saying eyewitnesses, but documented facts and material to analyze. For example, we must know how often they occur, where they occur, how fast they travel, how far, how wide they can get, etcetera. Without this knowledge, it's basically idiotic to alter any ship design, because for all we know, it could be like making all clothes in Italy volcano proof; an eruption happens every now and then, but it's so rare that it's silly to think you need to protect yourself from it.

Last but not least, I assure you that out of the millions of sailors out there, some of them are morons, compulsive liars and mentally insane. Of course, that statement goes for everyone else too. Point is, how can you as a scientist tell who's who? Therefore, eyewitnesses aren't very credible. Oh, and I'm definitely not saying that I doubt the existence of such waves. I just think that the post that I made my first reply to wasn't very insightful.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[ultranova]

The scientists made their decisions on objective data but weren't convinced by anecdotal evidence. In other words science worked just as it's supposed to work.

Dismissing observations - any observations - because they don't fit the current model is not scientific. This is especially true when the observed phenomenom is so rare that systematic scientific study is not possible.

Not really, ships have survived them

[SmallFurryCreature]

The entire trick to surviving these waves seems to be not catch them from the side. If this warning comes in enough time to turn the ship to face the wave at the safest angle then the ship stands a better chance.

Even if the ship is destined to sink, this might give the crew more time to get to the liveboats, some modern ones are almost like subs so that no matter the wave, they can survive because they always right themselves and are closed so they can't fill with water and are to small to be broken up.

I have no idea exactly how much warning a ship can get with this, but as you can see from the pictures supplied and the stories in the article these waves can be survived. Perhaps a person with some experience can tell if the sudden sinkings could be down to the ship catching the wave at the wrong angle.

Re:Not really, ships have survived them

[Sanat]

When I lived in Sydney, Australia area, i visited a friend in Lower Templestow near Melbourne and she and i and about five or six others went with a friend in a large cabin cruiser out past the breakwall at Portsea into the near ocean area and we were laughing, drinking and doing some fishing and all of a sudden a wall of high water was coming at us. Fortunately the engines were on and the captain immediately turned into the wave as well as he could do in the few seconds we had.

We were picked up and tossed about and then dropped into a hole of air at least several feet in depth. Fortunately no one was thrown overboard but we were all pretty shook up and the party seemed to end about then.

The captain put it to vote on whether to stay out or go back to port. Most chose to go back and the Captain wanted to verify that no damage had weakened the structure so he was obviously pleased with this choice.

And this is my small happening with a rogue wave.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

[tompaulco]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to halt the global climate change that's causing catastrophic seaward events like these?
I realize you are trolling, but to answer your question: No. It is a lot easier to write software to detect rogue waves than it is to halt global climate change.

I survived one that hit shore.

[JimMarch(equalccw)]

More people get killed along the Pacific NorthWest coast by rogue waves than by sharks.

I was 12, picking mussels along the coast about 20 miles south of San Francisco - "Sail Rock" just south of San Francisco. It was a very low tide and a smaller rock just off the main one was accessible when the water flowed out between major waves. This smaller rock was about 2ft wide, 10ft long and about 10ft high, and the top 4ft was bone dry, higher than even the spray patterns let alone wave action.

My dad and kid brother (age 8) were on the main rock. I had made it out to the smaller rock and was filling a bucket with the biggest mussels I'd ever handled. I had my bucket mostly full when I glanced up.

I'd been warned about these things and I knew the 20-ft tall wall of water coming at me was a killer. They pick people up, smash 'em on the rocks behind them then drag them out to sea unconscious...or sometimes grab people right off sandy beaches.

My dad spotted it around the same time and pulled my kid brother further up the main rock (about 70ft tall). I don't know how far up they made it - my dad got seriously wet and had to cling to my brother while assuming I was toast.

My only chance was to straddle the smaller rock like a jockey on a horse and hand on. I remember thinking about options while the whole world slowed down, and then doing the straddle and grab number. When the wave hit it was like being flushed down a giant toilet. The water peaked out around 4ft over my head. As it washed out, my dad said the sight of me doing my best imitation of a big funny-lookin' barnacle was the best sight he'd ever seen.

It dragged the glasses off my face, never saw that bucket or hammer again, hands were cut up but I made it.

That thing was well over 10x the size of the normal waves coming in.

My dad wasn't upset with me. He knew I'd thought I was going to die and knew I'd always, always keep an eyeball on that ocean when near it.

Heh. It was my mom that freaked out worse when we got home but she too understood I'd had enough problems.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

[harves]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to halt the global climate change ... ? Whoa, slow down AC. Large waves like this have nothing to do with global climate change. As the summary says, random reports of these waves have been trickling in for centuries. Noone is suggesting (yet) that these waves have become more severe or more common in recent years - just that the scientific community finally took the reports seriously and did some analysis.

My experience with a rouge wave

[lancejjj]

I was about 18 years old when I was putt-putting around in a small 20-foot motor boat in Narragansett Bay of off Rhode Island with some friends.

We were fishing and otherwise having a good time, when I noticed a large wave coming towards us in otherwise calm waters. In panic, I quickly pointed it out my friend Bruce who was piloting the craft. "No problem", he said, who calmly started to turn the boat into the wave. I don't think he quite understood how huge the wave was - maybe he was thinking it was the wake from another boat.... clearly its size didn't register with him.

But I sure did recognize the size of this wave, and it was considerably higher than 10 feet. I ducked and covered and held on for dear life, but it was faster or closer than I thought.

Before I was ready for it, the wave threw up the boat and slammed it back down at an unnatural angle. We were all knocked around. I was thrown from the bow to the stern of the boat, getting my body knocked on the windshield, my friends, and the seats (in that order). Bruce landed in the water, and someone helped him back on board.

The boat was flooded, but no one was seriously hurt. We checked out our bloody scrapes, put equipment back in place, and mopped up all the water in the boat.

It was weird - just this one big wave in a calm bay on a calm summer morning.

Re:My experience with a rouge wave

[flyingfsck]

This happens frequently in bays, since waves diffract around the capes and then you get constructive interference between the normal waves and the two diffractions, causing occasional waves 3 times taller than normal.

rogue

[odo graphic]

There are no rogue waves, only Chuck Norris swimming laps.

For those actually interested,

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiki has a good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave_(oceanography)

For the entirety of my career (33 years) scientists have accepted the existance of rogue waves. The problem is that there were few measurements. That is remarkable given the number of instruments we put into the water every year. As the Wiki article points out there are several competing theories of how the waves happen. It is possible that more than one of these theories is correct depending on local conditions. For instance, in the middle of the ocean, such waves might be caused when waves coming from several directions all achieve maximum amplitude at the same place and time. Nearer to shore, they may be caused by the shoreline focusing waves like a parabolic reflector.

I'm not a scientist but I have spent a lot of time working with them and I have never heard one deny the existance of rogue waves.

Re:Tsunami

[RogueyWon]

Not necessarily.

Tsunamis and Rogue Waves are very different. If you'll forgive the generalisations; Tsunamis are mostly caused by events which result in the displacement of large quantities of water, such as earthquakes, landslides and asteroid impacts. They travel for hundreds, or even thousands of miles and cover a wide area of the sea. Their speed and height is heavily dependent upon the depth of the water - in deep water, they can travel at hundreds of miles per hour, but, crucially, may be no more than a few inches high. Ships can pass over them without ever realising they've done so. When they hit shallower water, the wave grows. However, what does the damage with tsunamis is not the height of the wave, per se, as the sheer amount of water behind it. The Boxing Day Tsumani that caused so much devastation a couple of years ago was only about 30 feet high when it hit land in many places - well within the range for a storm wave at the high end of the normal scale. However, the "wave" you see with a tsumani is just the front end of a huge body of water, with a vast amount of momentum. When a tsunami hits, it is as though the water level in the area affected has just jumped up to the height of the top of the incoming wave. This is obviously devastating, as it causes massive flooding and hugely powerful movements of water that can go miles inland.

Rogue waves, on the other hand, are essentially "surface" waves. The causes vary (winds running counter to currents is one cause, but there are others), but they have, in most respects, more in common with a storm wave than a tsunami. Their shape resembles that of a "breaking" wave when it hits the shore (although this is quite different from the "rolling" shape of a wave in the middle of the ocean) and there is no huge mass of water behind the wave itself. However, the height of a rogue wave is truly terrifying - essentially up to 100 feet - twice the size of the largest storm waves you could normally expect to encounter. Rogue waves are so dangerous to ships because their size and shape ensures that the pressure they exert on a ship they hit is way beyond what would normally be expected and designed for. However, they are rare and short-lived. The waves will usually be no more than a mile or two long and will run for about 10 miles or so on average.

The system discussed in TFA appears to be a radar based system. It works by picking up very, very large waves on radar and warning the crew of a ship caught in the path (giving them time to prepare and turn the ship to meet the wave). However, tsunamis would not show up on radar in mid-ocean and only the ultra-rare megatsunamis (which can occur either in an enclosed bay which suffers a massive land-slide, or on a broader scale when a truly massive asteroid impact or landslide occurs) would ever reach the height of a freak wave. Tsunami detection is likely better left to seismic monitoring and pressure sensors.

My father can...Thought I would share this story

[mindaktiviti]

"Tsunami in the middle of the pacific"...this is THE story my dad has. Every dad has one, the one story he'll tell his kids and grandkids...and this one is his.

Fresh out of Politechnika Gdaska (Gdansk University of Technology) my dad took a job as a communication's officer on a fishing boat that did fishing in the pacific, and they were away for 18 months.

In 1978 between November 10th & 17th, about 60 miles west of Vancouver island, a rogue wave hit my dad's 150m(524') fishing ship. The wave came from the north (the direction they were facing) and it was about 60m (200') big. They were in a bad storm for about a week and on the last night of the storm the wave hit them. Luckily they were facing it and it wasn't one that was rolling over itself (don't know the correct terminology), but it was just this huge mass of water rolling towards them.

It was the ship captain, the first officer, ship's engineer, and himself - ship's communication officer that were inside the top part where you steer the boat (once again, not sure of proper terminology). They weren't expecting it but essentially what happened was their ship was going sort of up and down with the regular waves, but with this one it just went up...and up...and up...and the engine started sputtering very loudly, almost choking, and the entire ship was just on this impossible angle for an impossible amount of time. And then the wave passed and the ship went back down. What they saw was essentially a wall of water rolling towards them that was about the size of an apartment building.

When this happened several crew members went above and they were just white like ghosts because the sensations they felt were so unnatural. The ship's engineer who had over 30 years of sea experience said that never in his life has he ever gone through anything like that. And yes...if they were facing sideways when they met the wave, I wouldn't be here because my father would have perished. No one believed what they said, including a lot of the crew on the actual ship! It was just something that wasn't possible for them.

I highly doubt that what he told me was bullshit because of the amount of detail he used and also the fact that he didn't even know what they were (i.e. the name "Rogue Wave"), and also because he told me this story many years ago.