Aug 7, 2025 06:13 PM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1093970
INTRO: On New Year’s Day 1995, a monstrous 80-foot wave in the North Sea slammed into the Draupner oil platform. The wall of water crumpled steel railings and flung heavy equipment across the deck — but its biggest impact was what it left behind: hard data. It was the first time a rogue wave had ever been measured in the open ocean.
“It confirmed what seafarers had described for centuries,” said Francesco Fedele, associate professor Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “They always talked about these waves that appear suddenly and are very large — but for a long time, we thought this was just a myth.”
Rethinking Rogues. No longer the stuff of legend, that single wave stunned scientists and launched decades of debate over how rogue waves form.
Fedele — a longtime skeptic of the conventional explanations — led an international team to investigate rogue wave origins. The results, published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, underscore the significance of their findings. The team analyzed 27,500 wave records collected over 18 years in the North Sea. It was the most comprehensive dataset of its kind.
Each record captured 30 minutes of detailed wave activity: height, frequency, and direction. Their findings challenged long-held assumptions. To occur, these towering waves don’t require “exotic” forces — just the right alignment of familiar ones.
Fedele explained, “Rogue waves follow the natural orders of the ocean — not exceptions to them. This is the most definitive, real-world evidence to date.”
Extraordinary Waves, Ordinary Physics. The dominant theory about rogue wave formation has been a phenomenon called modulational instability, a process where small changes in timing and spacing between waves cause energy to concentrate into a single wave. Instead of staying evenly distributed, the wave pattern shifts, causing one wave to suddenly grow much larger than the rest.
Fedele pointed out that modulational instability “is mainly accurate when the waves are confined within channels, like in lab experiments, where energy can only flow in one direction. In the open ocean, though, energy can spread in multiple directions.” (MORE - details, no ads)
INTRO: On New Year’s Day 1995, a monstrous 80-foot wave in the North Sea slammed into the Draupner oil platform. The wall of water crumpled steel railings and flung heavy equipment across the deck — but its biggest impact was what it left behind: hard data. It was the first time a rogue wave had ever been measured in the open ocean.
“It confirmed what seafarers had described for centuries,” said Francesco Fedele, associate professor Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “They always talked about these waves that appear suddenly and are very large — but for a long time, we thought this was just a myth.”
Rethinking Rogues. No longer the stuff of legend, that single wave stunned scientists and launched decades of debate over how rogue waves form.
Fedele — a longtime skeptic of the conventional explanations — led an international team to investigate rogue wave origins. The results, published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, underscore the significance of their findings. The team analyzed 27,500 wave records collected over 18 years in the North Sea. It was the most comprehensive dataset of its kind.
Each record captured 30 minutes of detailed wave activity: height, frequency, and direction. Their findings challenged long-held assumptions. To occur, these towering waves don’t require “exotic” forces — just the right alignment of familiar ones.
Fedele explained, “Rogue waves follow the natural orders of the ocean — not exceptions to them. This is the most definitive, real-world evidence to date.”
Extraordinary Waves, Ordinary Physics. The dominant theory about rogue wave formation has been a phenomenon called modulational instability, a process where small changes in timing and spacing between waves cause energy to concentrate into a single wave. Instead of staying evenly distributed, the wave pattern shifts, causing one wave to suddenly grow much larger than the rest.
Fedele pointed out that modulational instability “is mainly accurate when the waves are confined within channels, like in lab experiments, where energy can only flow in one direction. In the open ocean, though, energy can spread in multiple directions.” (MORE - details, no ads)
