Long considered myth, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs.
Long considered myth, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs. Using 700 years’ worth of wave data from more than a billion waves, scientists at the University of Copenhagen and University of Victoria have used artificial intelligence to find a formula for how to predict the occurrence of these maritime monsters. The new knowledge can make shipping safer.
Stories about monster waves, called rogue waves, have been the lore of sailors for centuries. But when a 26-metre-high rogue wave slammed into the Norwegian oil platform Draupner in 1995, digital instruments were there to capture and measure the North Sea monster. It was the first time that a rogue had been measured and provided scientific evidence that abnormal ocean waves really do exist.
Since then, these extreme waves have been the subject of much study. And now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have used AI methods to discover a mathematical model that provides a recipe for how – and not least when – rogue waves can occur.
With the help of enormous amounts of big data about ocean movements, researchers can predict the likelihood of being struck by a monster wave at sea at any given time.
Read more at University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science
Photo Credit: WikiImages via Pixabay
