|
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
From: robertgainer (no email)
Date: Fri Jul 23 2004 - 12:26:45 EDT
Brian Eiland posted this on www.boatdesign.net today. I thought it
might be of interest to the group.
All the best,
Robert Gainer
ROGUE WAVES
Paris - European satellites have given confirmation to terrified
mariners who describe seeing freak waves as tall as 10-storey
buildings, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. "Rogue waves" have
been the anecdotal cause behind scores of sinkings of vessels as
large as container ships and supertankers over the past two decades.
But evidence to support this has been sketchy, and many marine
scientists have clung to statistical models that say monstrous
deviations from the normal sea state only occur once every thousand
years.
Testing this promise, ESA tasked two of its Earth-scanning
satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, to monitor the oceans with their radar.
The radars send back "imagettes" -- a picture of the sea surface in
a rectangle measuring 10 by five kilometers (six by 2.5 miles) that
is taken every 200 kms (120 miles). Around 30,000
separate "imagettes" were taken by the two satellites in a three-
week project, MaxWave, that was carried out in 2001.
Even though the research period was brief, the satellites identified
more than 10 individual giant waves around the globe that measured
more than 25 metres (81.25 feet) in height, ESA said in a press
release. The waves exist "in higher numbers than anyone expected,"
said Wolfgang Rosenthal, senior scientist with the GKSS Research
Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, who pored over the data. "The next
step is to analyze if they can be forecasted," he said.
Ironically, the research coincided with two "rogue wave" incidents
in which two tourist cruisers, the Bremen and the Caledonian Star,
had their bridge windows smashed by 30-metre (100-feet) monsters in
the South Atlantic. The Bremen was left drifting without navigation
or propulsion for two hours after the hit. In 1995, the British
cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II encountered a 29-metre (94.25-feet)
wall of water during a hurricane in the North Atlantic. Its captain,
Ronald Warwick, likened it to "the White Cliffs of Dover." - AFP,
full story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...afp/science_sea
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/A1TolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/world-cruising/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
|