Legendary death waves are real and scientists have to figure out how to predict them

In 1826, Captain Jules Dumont d’Urville, a French scientist and naval officer, was caught up in a turbulent storm while crossing the Indian Ocean. From his ship Astrolabe, the captain saw a giant wall of water more than 24 meters high that threatened the crew.

After the incident, Captain Jules lost one of his crew members and brought back an unbelievable story. Despite the support of three other witnesses, the story of a giant wave in the middle of the sea is still so unbelievable that it is considered a fiction.

Scientists at the time believed that waves could only reach as high as about 9 meters, so the few 19th-century reports of unusually large waves are largely regarded as maritime myths.

It wasn’t until much later that scientists realized that these accounts were rare because sailors who had experienced these killer waves were not as fortunate as Captain Jules. Most of them would have little chance of surviving or keeping their minds clear after being hit by such raging waves.

Killer waves are real

Today, a killer wave is defined as a wave that is twice as high as the waves around it. These huge bulges can appear suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere.

With sloping edges and a deep trench below, they resemble a wall of water jutting out of the sea. They can occur during storms with rough seas but have also been reported in calm waters, which is one reason they are so difficult to predict.

Scientists have recognized killer waves as a real phenomenon since the mid-1990s. However, keeping seafarers safe from them remains a major challenge. Although they are relatively rare, violent waves can cause serious damage and loss of life if they collide with a ship at sea. In the vastness of the ocean, the interaction of many forces has led to the creation of rogue waves.

As shipbuilding technology advanced in the 20th century, an increasing number of witnesses survived the killer waves. In April 1966, an Italian cruise ship named Michelangelo encountered a 24 meter high wave that stood apart from the surrounding waves. The ship suffered considerable damage and three people drowned, but most of those on board made it to shore safely.

The crew of the MS München, a German container ship, were not so lucky. In December 1978, the ship left the German port city of Bremerhaven for Savannah, Georgia, loaded with steel cargo and a crew of 28. The ship was once gone and never returned. A lifeboat attached to the ship about 20 meters above the water was recovered, but it appeared to have ripped off its pylon, which could only have been caused by a wave higher than 20 meters.

The scientific doubts about these mysterious giant waves were not completely dispelled until 1995, when a rogue wave crashed into the Draupner oil rig, a natural gas platform in the North Sea. off the coast of Norway. The wave’s crest, as measured by a laser detector on the rig’s scaffolding, was 26 meters above the surface.

Since then, scientists have discovered that unlike tsunamis, killer waves are large waves created by the sudden displacement of water from an event such as an earthquake or a landslide. They are formed by a random combination of wave motions in the ocean.

Find the solution to the killer wave

Two main mathematical theories have emerged to explain the wave motions that produce killer waves: Linear Addition and Non-Linear Convergence.

Linear addition assumes that waves move through the ocean at different speeds, and when they overlap, they can strengthen into a killer wave. But in nature, the formation of killer waves is also based on a multitude of different factors.

To compensate for the limited observations of this type of wave, scientists rely on wave pools. Laboratory reconstructions closely simulate what happens on the ocean’s surface. These experiments can even account for currents and winds, although controlled settings have their own limitations.

When water is trapped in a narrow channel such as a wave pool, it is much easier to form and observe large waves. However, these experiments are still limited because experimental waves do not have the ability to propagate in all directions like at sea

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is developing a system that can forecast potentially hazardous areas of the ocean every hour using a program called WAVEWATCH III. The latest version, released in 2019, uses a probability formula that Fedele developed in 2012 to predict extreme conditions in the ocean at a particular place and time.

It’s a useful tool to help keep seafarers out of dangerous waters, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to protect them from an unusually dangerous wave.

Find out the common recipe for seafarers

More recently, mathematicians have combined real-world data collected from observation buoys with statistical models to understand what causes these giant waves. Their work offers hope that humans can predict killer waves before they strike.

A school of mathematics that says what causes the killer waves is not important, because it is still possible to predict them fairly accurately using a statistical framework for rare cases known as the large deviation theory.

The idea behind this method is to model the most efficient way a giant wave can form, and then use the model to chart the development path of a particular wave.

This theory produces linear and nonlinear effects depending on the situation, that’s why its proponents consider it a unified theory and can be used to predict killer waves in different ocean conditions.

A team of researchers tested this theory in wave channels, measuring the results based on real-time wave observations, and found that the method could predict spurious waves in both media reliably. surprising.

One problem, however, is that calculating by graph formula is a difficult math-solving technique. Sailors at sea do not have enough time to collect data and are qualified to solve formulas quickly.