New Software Could Warn Sailors of Rogue Waves 131
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."
This is hardly new... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, its called.. (Score:2, Funny)
Eddie would go (Score:2)
Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l_8hOai9hGQ [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:5, Interesting)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The scientists aren't fully to blame for the fact that these waves were so long thought impossible, but neither are they completely blame
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Would saying "ok, I believe you" without any evidence or understanding actually have saved any of the lives lost?
Re: (Score:2)
Quick! Look behind you!
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you need a scientist to prove something exists? Really, I would the burden on science would be to prove that it doesn't exist. That's one thing that's lost in this process. A scientist tells me that I didn't see a rogue wave, when I saw it, then, he needs to prove that it doesn't exist. Really, its the same sort of thinking over and over again... there's a theory, says something couldn
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Science is nothing more than eyewitness accounts. You claim to witness something, then, I can witness it too. In the best and strongest case, you create a model that will allow others to predict what they will witness, then, below that, you can just give a set of procedures to witness something, and finally, you can say that you witnessed something and then make up a story about it.
Ultimately, the whole academic
Re: (Score:2)
You're using the word 'witness' in a much broader sense than I was. People that see rare events, and are unprepared for them, very often perceive things quite differently than more objective observers. As things get more systematic and repeatable, things do get better, as you pointed out.
Right now, from the public perspective, its not as much as one might think, and that's really why superstition is making a comeback.
That I have to agree with.
Re: (Score:2)
Simply put, although I'd peg rogue waves as being extremely improbable, I could easily see how all of the factors could hypothetically lead to several waves constructively interfering to create a single massive wave. I *am* surprised, however, to see that these rogue waves are observed as frequently as they are, however.
To be fair, scientists have also admitted th
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Those are different in that it's usually one person alone, and can be accounted for by other effects.
Rogue waves are much different. Most ships on the open ocean have large crews. Even if it's only four or five people that's enough to move it out of the "crackpot with severe mental issues" category. And these are/wer
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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..
I would think sailors would be credible. That'
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 f
Re: (Score:2)
Your argument has the premise that scientists are the people whose job it is to separate fact from fiction. By allowing them to accept or reject what the sailors say, you argue that scientists should be in a position to judge the credibility of other people, and, in fact, in today's society, they are. However, what's happened here is that you have two groups of people, scientists and sailors, and ultimately, the sailors were right, and the scientists wro
Re: (Score:2)
Your argument has the premise that scientists are the people whose job it is to separate fact from fiction. By allowing them to accept or reject what the sailors say, you argue that scientists should be in a position to judge the credibility of other people, and, in fact, in today's society, they are.
You seem to ignore what I'm saying and merely reduce all my points to "how can you tell who's who". It's not easy to debate with someone who chooses to see what he wishes to see, but here goes.
Science comes from the Latin scientia, knowledge. If you cannot separate fact from fiction, your job as a scientist is sort of pointless. Let's say that you're a scientist who is developing a new car. If you put it your way, the scientist is supposed to - at least in some cases - go for fictional "facts". Maybe he
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the pilots did see a U
Re: (Score:2)
Then you go on
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 grou
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Which is irrelevant, you fly on planes that you rarely understand the basic principles of much less the engineering. You drive on cars whose inner working are sometimes trade secrets. You eat food whose origin is a mystery in most cases and whose composition you never even try to check.
We trust a lot of things which means very little. Nothing is perfect and often there is a bloody good reason for that. Claiming something will make it better is usually how you make things much much worse.
Re: (Score:2)
It's certainly relevant to the point I was making. The antecedent of "them" in "our trust of them" was "the scientists proposing the theories." Airlines and cars are not built based on trust of scientists proposing these theories, but on rigorous real-world testing that confirms they hold true, and on insurers who put their own money on the line based on their estimates of the probabilistic s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and Al Gore is correct. Saying "there is scientific consensus" doesn't mean "trust these people blindly", it means "you can check the results if you want to".
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, you can certainly look up the journal articles, which discuss how nasty the computer models say it will be
Re: (Score:2)
You make no sense; all data and models have been published and discussed at length. If you disagree with any of them, publish a paper.
You also seem to be starting from the wrong assumption that the burden of proof is on people claiming that global warming is happening and carbon emissions are dangerous. Quite to the contrary: given the potential ris
Re: (Score:2)
You also seem to be starting from the wrong assumption that the burden of proof is on people claiming that global warming is happening and carbon emissions are dangerous. Quite to the contrary: given the potential risks, the burden of proof is on people arguing that continued massive carbon emissions are safe.
In science, the burden of proof always lies with the person making the claim. When global warming was just a new hypothesis, the burden of proof was on thos
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. And it's fine to say that you'd like more proof for the claim "Anthropogenic global warming is occurring." But that claim isn't relevant for policy decisions about carbon emissions. At best, it's relevant for identifying nations responsible for the consequences of global warming.
The claim that's relevant about carbon emissions is "Massive carbon emissions are safe for the environment and climate.", and that claim is largely
Re: (Score:2)
"You make no sense; all astrological analysis has been published and discussed at length. If you disagree with any of their predictions, public a paper in any leading astrological journal."
The whole point of science (as opposed to groupthink) is that it's robust against individual bias. If you're saying someone can only contest a "scientific" claim if he can convince an eli
Re: (Score:2)
Engineers: "The peak wave height ever recorded in the area is 15 metres, so we're going to design and build the platform to withstand 30-metre waves."
Beancounters: "Do you have any scientific basis for that recommendation?"
Engineers: "Well, no, but we heard this old sailor telling stories one day..."
Beancounters: "YOU'RE FIRED".
Re: (Score:2)
Engineers: "Well, no, but we heard this old sailor telling stories one day..."
Realistically, its more like this:
Sailor: "A giant wave knocked off the bow of my ship."
Engineer: "Sorry, but that wave couldn't have existed, because my computer model didn't predict it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And don't forget evolution! Those scientists, with all their theories, undermining honest God-fearing values! Have they ever seen anything evolve? No!
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't about saying that science should be replaced by religion. It is about saying that science should not become a religion, and, in this case, it was a religion about wave theory that hindered science. Had someone gotten off their ass, gotten onto a boat, and looked for some of these rogue waves, instead of just saying that it was impossible, then, we
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I guarantee there are more eyewitness reports and photographs of alien abductions and lake monsters than rogue waves.
How can elitist scientists ignore this mountain of evidence at our peril?
Re: (Score:2)
Note that once all you have to rely
Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed. (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
E.g. meteors before 1833 were considered a meteorological event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonids [wikipedia.org]
And only a strong Leonid meteor shower changed it.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem?
We've had one of these every year for the past three years.
Re: (Score:2)
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, [...] I find it amazing that anyone would blindly trust an academic institution with any matter of policy,
What's amazing about that? Mankind has been working that way for thousands of years, only worse. Millions upon millions of people have died because the church said diseases were a punishment from god and praying, not hygiene or medicine, was the proper way to do something about it. Same with almost everything else that kills people. As a species we've been living on the "someone important said it, so it must be true" meme for most of our existence, and are only very slowly struggling to free ourselve
But there's a couple basic gotchas (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
i'll take those odds. the thing about a rouge wave detector is that if it works, and you avoid the wave, you may never see it. you don't really know what the false-positive rate is. but if only 1% of your avoidance maneuvers (for a rare event) are for naught, there's not much time or fuel being wasted. the way you can determine if it works or not is if the number of lost ships decreases, or eyewitness accounts start m
Re: (Score:2)
Another problem is that you cannot
so basically (Score:1)
Not really, ships have survived them (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
We were picked up and tossed
My father can...Thought I would share this story (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:My father can...Thought I would share this stor (Score:2)
top part where you steer the boat... bridge or pilot house
If the wave hit them from the side, there would be an extreme danger of rolling over (capsizing)
Facing a wave head on also has a danger of flipping.
An angle as opposed to head-on or from the side probably has the best chance of riding through it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure there are careers dedicated to stability in ship design, but most sailors would do well to learn the basics of the Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS - the higher the better), which is what's taught on the RYA Yachmaster course:
http://www.sailtrain.co.uk/stability/vanishing_stability.htm [sailtrain.co.uk]
Manufactur
Surfing (Score:2)
I survived one that hit shore. (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:2)
A particularly bad place for rogue waves is the so-called Bermuda Triangle, where
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Overlords (Score:2)
My experience with a rouge wave (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:1)
Friggin' spell check doesn't check MY spelling, damn it.
Re:My experience with a rouge wave (Score:4, Interesting)
rogue (Score:5, Funny)
For those actually interested, (Score:3, Informative)
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.
To whomever tagged this article "idontcare"... (Score:1, Insightful)
How about the person that tagged it "apple"? (Score:1)
oh come on (Score:1)
Betrayed (Score:1)
rogue waves and that information was not shared with commercial shipping or with yachtsmen around the world. One rogue wave actually ripped the end of
the flight deck off of an aircraft carrier and those decks are quite far above the waters surface.
So just why was the world kept in the dark over these waves? Appa
Re: Betrayed - scientists ignored us too (Score:2)
General information on waves (Score:2)
All of the comments I'm seeing about first-hand experiences with rogue waves all seem to have a common thread: they happen within a few hundred metres near shore. This *might* imply that these waves are being affected by ground features, coral formations, etc. Look, even the article discusses rogue waves that were ONLY seen during periods of weather stress: a large wave during a hurricane? No shit! A large wave near South Africa -- this isn't news -- the cape of SA is a known dangerous spot as is the C
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
First line of the comment I replied to, emphasis mine. You were saying?
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This kind of waves are just as normal as torrential rains. I doubt global warming started by the time Noah build his ship
Re: (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... waves hit YOU.
In Soviet Russia, jokes make you sensible.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Tsunami (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
If I had the points, I would have modded you up.
It does surprise me that this would be news, if I understand correctly the Arthur Anderson identified 2 of them about the time that the Edmund Fitzgerald foundered, that was just over 30 years ago. Seems to me that this kind of thing should have been figured out and properly done years ago.
It does surprise me that the other products wouldn't have more or less been perfected in terms of identification.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)