Monster wave

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A “super wave” in the laboratory
Monster wave in the French Biscay at approx. 200 meters water depth: the wave height can only be estimated (photo taken around 1940)

Monster waves (also giant waves , Kaventsmänner or Freakwaves of English wave freak , English also rogue waves ) are exceptionally high, single marine water waves .

The height and speed of such waves create enormous impact forces. Smaller ships can be "swallowed" or "smashed". Larger ships can become incapable of maneuvering due to the enormous forces caused by damage to the superstructure or by broken windows . Even for large ships, monster waves represent a serious danger, as the sluggish hulls are exposed to extraordinary and very rapidly changing loads, under which they can even break apart.

For a long time, monster waves were considered a sailor's thread , until satellite images and other measurements proved their existence. They have only been recognized since 1995 and are being intensively researched.

description

history

Until 1995, monster waves, which have been reported by seafarers for centuries, were considered pure inventions (" sailor's yarn "). Losses of ships have been attributed to poor maintenance or a lack of seafaring skills, although there have been cases where these justifications have not been sufficient. Two events with clearly documented monster waves then led to their existence no longer being questioned and scientific research began: On New Year's Eve 1995, the automatic wave measuring system of the Norwegian oil drilling platform Draupner-E detected a single wave during a storm in the North Sea - the then called Draupner wave - documented with a height of 26 m.

Draupner wave

That same year, on September 11th, the British luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was hit by monster waves over the Newfoundland Bank on its way from Cherbourg to New York . It became clear that there were monster waves, and reports and research were evaluated in the years that followed.

The maximum height of natural ocean waves of 15 m, previously determined by scientific research, was also the benchmark for the design of the loading capacity of ships in shipbuilding at 16.5 m. Only a research assignment from the insurance companies, which had to pay for the loss of ships, brought new knowledge.

state of research

Physical formation of a monster wave

A swell is basically composed of components of different wavelengths - and thus the speed of propagation (see also phase velocity ) - and direction. The current local water level is often initially assumed to be statistically normally distributed according to the central limit theorem . Refers to heuristically than by the intuitively perceived Seegangshöhe significant wave height given (the arithmetic average of the wave heights of the highest-third of the waves). However, the normal distribution also allows much larger height differences, which occur only very rarely, but whose frequency can be precisely determined assuming the normal distribution. While it was previously assumed that very high waves (“wave of the century”) occur less often than corresponds to the normal distribution, more recent observations and theoretical approaches lead to the opposite conclusion. The reason for this is that the superposition of the elementary waves is not linear, as the Central Limit Theorem assumes. Overall, the distribution of rarely high waves that deviate from the normal distribution is not yet fully understood.

Monster waves exceed the "significant wave height ", i.e. the mean value of the highest waves in a sea state, by at least twice and have a comparatively short wavelength. This leads to a massive impact that can lead to serious destruction or the sinking of a ship. Accidentally hitting cliffs, they can also sweep people and animals away.

Three types of monster waves are known so far:

  1. the Kaventsmann (English rogue wave ), a large, relatively fast wave that does not follow the direction of normal swell;
  2. The Three Sisters (Engl. Three Sisters ), three quick successive big waves in the narrow valleys ships can not develop the necessary lift and then run over by the second or later than the third wave. It is unclear whether this phenomenon always consists of exactly three waves or whether variants with two, four or five waves occur;
  3. the White wall (engl. Whitewalls ), a very steep wave of whose crest down spraying the spray, followed by a deep trough.

Complex models are necessary to explain monster waves. For example, Alfred Osborne , Professor of Physics at the University of Turin , used the quantum mechanistic Schrödinger equation for the first time in 1965 to describe the non-linear propagation of ocean waves. According to these equations, the monster wave arises rather randomly due to wave instabilities, as it locally sucks energy from its surrounding wave trains and can thus become much higher than the surrounding waves. Oceanographers paid little attention to his early work . Osborne rejected this calculation method - until 1995 on the Draupner-E oil drilling platform in the North Sea a single wave was registered that exactly matched Osborne's predictions. The non-linearity of water waves has since been recognized and has been taken into account by shipbuilders since around 2001.

Monster waves are also often concentrated in areas with ocean currents. Strong winds against the direction of the ocean current make the development of high seas more likely. A swell can also run against an ocean current. The waves get shorter, but steeper and higher. If there are also overlaps, large waves arise. Sea areas in which the water depth suddenly decreases are also known for dangerous seas. The sea areas southeast and east of South Africa and the southern tip of South America ( Cape Horn ) are notorious for the appearance of monster waves.

Giant waves can be distinguished from normal waves by the steep front on satellite images taken vertically from above. Normal waves do not have as much contrast to represent wave height and are equally steep on either side. It is believed that these monster waves are caused by the superposition of several normal waves with different speeds. This can cause waves up to 40 meters high. Research has been underway for a number of years as to why such giant waves are observed more frequently in certain places like Cape Horn .

During radar measurements in the North Sea, monster waves were detected for the first time. The measurements were carried out by Julian Wolfram from the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on the “Draupner” oil platform, and 466 monster waves were registered within twelve years. With the European environmental satellites ERS-1 and -2 , radar measurements were carried out worldwide as part of the MaxWave project, measuring ten waves that were more than 25 m high in three weeks. This proved that monster waves occur more frequently than expected. Some of the researchers then believe that most of the roughly 200 large ships over 200 meters in length that have sunk in the last 20 years were directly or indirectly sunk by such waves.

In the meantime, there is also evidence that monster waves are created by breaking waves at obstacles within the framework of a linear theory and not by (non-linear) resonance effects. This was found in a simulation of waves and their refraction at metal cone obstacles, which are small compared to the wavelength, using microwaves in the laboratory.

Particular dangers from giant waves

With the so-called monster waves, not only the size of this type of wave is a problem, but also its characteristics. They have a very steep slope and a relatively high speed. Due to the inherent inertia of a ship, it cannot simply run over such a wave, but is literally rolled over by it (breaker wave). The loads that occur here are considerably higher than with normal storm waves. While most ships are designed for a maximum water pressure of 150  kN / m², a direct hit by such a wave can result in a pressure of well over 1,000 kN / m². Even with a head-on hit, the ship plunges deep into the wave; Due to the height of the wave, the water hammer usually hits the structures that are not designed for such a high impact.

Another problem is the short wavelength and, as a result, the large wave troughs that lead and follow in rapid succession. The ship is caught and raised very quickly at the bow (in the event of frontal hits). It breaks through the wave to get back into a steep valley, while the middle section and stern are still under full wave load at this point. Since ships are not designed for point loading capacity , the ship can break at its "exposed" bow that is not supported by buoyancy as a result of its own weight.

If the ship is hit from the side, capsizing is almost inevitable.

Differentiation from tsunamis

Monster waves have little in common with tsunamis . While a tsunami is caused by sudden movements of the sea floor ( seaquake , volcanic eruption , landslide ), i.e. by displacement water, only surface water is involved in a monster wave. Since the wave height of a tsunami in the open sea is low (only up to one meter) and the wave length is very long (several hundred km), the tsunami passes under a ship so gently that the wave is usually not noticed by people on the ship . However, a monster wave piles up to form a wall of water even on the high seas.

If a tsunami reaches flat coastal regions, it can pile up to a wall of water more than 50 meters high and the wave can penetrate far inland due to its great length and the enormous moving water masses associated with it. A monster wave, on the other hand, collapses as soon as it hits land.

Predictions of particularly endangered areas

A simulation model designed by Tim Janssen ( SFSU ) and Thomas Herbers ( NPS ) in 2008 should show where and why such giant waves arise. Coastal zones with strongly fluctuating sea depths and different flow conditions are among the vulnerable sea areas in which unpredictably large waves can occur. Sandbanks and current conditions are responsible for the fact that waves change direction and speed. In “wave focal points”, energy can collect at a certain point like light under a magnifying glass. If a wave, Janssen told the BBC, moves over a sandbank or another current, such “wave focal points” could have an effect. The computer model should recognize hotspots at which such flow overlaps occur. The result is that at a hotspot there are three extreme waves for every thousand normal ones, while in a normal wave field there are only three more extreme variants every 10,000 waves. So far, the researchers' model has been purely theoretical. A reliability test is carried out on a section of the Cortes Bank , e.g. Some shoals reaching to the surface of the sea 82 kilometers southwest of San Clemente , the southernmost of the Californian Channel Islands , were planned using real measurement data. The Cortes Bank is considered to be a zone where different currents in the sea cross.

For shipping, a model that identifies zones with a high probability of monster waves relatively precisely would be of great use, if sea routes could then be designed according to the probability of such “freak waves”. But first the suitability of the Californian explanatory model has to be proven.

Counter maneuvers

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Until the 2000s, the most sensible countermeasure was to approach the shaft with full machine power as frontal as possible, as this area of ​​the ship is designed for the highest loads and cuts the shaft. The latest findings indicate that this is not the optimum, but the wave - if it is recognized early enough and a maneuver is still possible at all - should be cut at a slight angle, analogous to the technique of driving over a dune with an off-road vehicle. Although this creates an extreme pressure load on the front bow due to the water masses, the risk of the ship breaking through is significantly lower and with a sufficiently small angle the probability of capsizing is not very high either.

Reports and disasters

  • On its maiden voyage, the German express steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm , at that time the most modern and fastest Atlantic liner in the world, was hit head-on by a huge wave in heavy seas on September 18, 1901, the day it sailed from Cherbourg in France to New York Significant damage to the front superstructure. Among other things, a fan on the foredeck and another on the sun deck were washed away. The wave struck a hole in the wall of the library below the wheelhouse and captain's cabin. Parts of the library and two of the three windows there were destroyed. In addition, a window was smashed on the bridge (usually around 20 meters above sea level).
  • In February 1909, a bad weather front that had lasted for days, with extreme gusts of wind and heavy seas, turned into a storm that confronted the British express steamer Lusitania with waves up to 25 meters high on its voyage from Queenstown in Ireland to New York. The waves damaged the navigation bridge and superstructures.
  • In February 1926, the Olympic was hit by a wave in the North Atlantic, which caused numerous damage, including four destroyed bridge windows (usually about 24 meters above sea level).
  • In February 1933, an officer on watch for the US Navy tanker Ramapo sighted a single wave 34 meters high in stormy seas on the way from Manila to San Diego .
  • In 1934 the Majestic , at that time the largest ship in the world, was hit by a large wave in the North Atlantic, which seriously injured the captain on the bridge (usually around 30 meters above sea level).
  • On September 18, 1973, an unusually high wave hit the Raffaello in the North Atlantic, sailing from New York to Palma , the largest Italian passenger ship at the time with 45,933 GRT. Among other things, the wave smashed some windows in the dining room (usually about 20 m above sea level) and caused considerable property damage there. Since the dining room was not occupied at that moment, no one was harmed.
  • Around Christmas 1978, the fall of the German LASH cargo ship Munich , which with a 28-man crew disappeared without a trace in the Atlantic north of the Azores, attracted a lot of attention . The negotiation of the Maritime Administration revealed that a huge wave probably made the ship incapable of maneuvering and then sank. It was possible to draw some conclusions about the wave height and energy of the accident due to the deformations on a lifeboat that was installed at a height of 20 m and later recovered.
  • A monster wave probably also sank the Ocean Ranger oil rig on February 15, 1982 . It smashed a window and caused a catastrophic water ingress. This created a short circuit in the control room for the pumps that stabilized the platform. As a result, the oil rig, which was considered unsinkable, capsized and sank. The entire 84-strong team was killed in the raging sea.
  • In October 1991 the Andrea Gail , a small trawler used in swordfish fishing , was lost in Hurricane Grace . It is believed that the ship was hit by a monster wave. This incident was filmed a few years later by Wolfgang Petersen as Der Sturm (based on the book of the same name by Sebastian Junger ).
  • On New Year's Eve 1995, the automatic wave measuring system of the Norwegian oil drilling platform Draupner-E in the North Sea reported a single wave with a height of 26 m in a storm with waves 12 m high. This proved that there were monster waves, and in the years that followed, reports and research were evaluated.
  • On September 11, 1995, the British luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was hit by giant waves on its way from Cherbourg to New York over the Newfoundland Bank. According to statements by the crew, supported by data from a Canadian weather buoy , this was a "three-sister" phenomenon with wave heights of 28 to 29 meters (according to other reports, one wave was 33 m high) and one Period of 13 seconds. Captain Ronald Warwick described it as "a huge wall of water ... it looked like we were going straight into the white cliffs of Dover."
  • East of the island of Rockall , a few hundred kilometers west of Scotland , the research vessel RRS Discovery (not to be confused with a much older research vessel of the same name ) documented waves up to 29 meters high on February 8, 2000. These also occurred in groups; previously it was assumed that monster waves only occur individually.
  • In the South Atlantic off Argentina, the bridges of the cruise ships Bremen (on February 22, 2001) and Caledonian Star (on March 2, 2001) were each destroyed by waves 35 meters high; they narrowly escaped ruin. Göran Persson , the first officer of the Caledonian Star , described the wave as "... mountain, like a wall of water." The Bremen then drifted for two hours on the open sea, unable to maneuver. This area of ​​the sea has no significant ocean current , so the theory found was not sufficient. It was also proven that monster waves are not limited to certain areas.
  • On April 16, 2005, Norwegian Dawn , a 2200-passenger cruise ship , was hit by a very large wave on its way back from the Bahamas to New York. This wave is said to have been about 21 meters high. It smashed windows, tore whirlpools overboard and flooded 62 cabins. Four passengers suffered minor injuries.
  • On June 23, 2008, the Japanese fishing cutter Suwa Maru No. 58 sunk by a monster wave in the Kuroshio Stream east of Japan. Only three fishermen survived. In retrospect, scientists analyzed this incident more closely and determined that it must have been a monster wave. These findings coincide with the statements made by the survivors.
  • With a height of 23.8 meters, the highest wave ever recorded in the southern hemisphere was registered on May 8, 2018 by a measuring buoy on Campbell Island , part of New Zealand .
  • On September 8, 2019, 2.5 km from Port aux Basques on Newfoundland, a measuring buoy measured several waves of approx. 25 m and a single wave height of 30.2 meters. This was the highest wave height determined by a buoy up to that point.

Monster waves in optics

The sudden occurrence of extreme wave outliers (rogue waves or freak waves) due to non-linear interaction was also demonstrated in fiber optics in 2007, i.e. a completely different area of ​​wave phenomena (D. Solli, Claus Ropers et al., University of California, Los Angeles ). When excited with relatively weak pulses of red light, a transition into the supercontinuum (white light with a broad wavelength spectrum) was sometimes observed, which otherwise only occurred in non-linear optics after excitation with pulses of high intensity. With all the differences, one hopes that the study of monster waves in optics will also provide conclusions about the phenomenon of water waves.

See also

literature

Fictional texts

  • Paul Gallico : The Fall of Poseidon. (The Poseidon Adventure) . Novel, 1969

Nonfictional texts

  • Susan Casey: Monster Waves. In search of the elemental force of the sea (original title: The Wave , translated by Harald Stadler). Droemer, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-426-27461-3 .
  • Stefan Krücken, Achim Multhaupt (photographer): Hurricane trip - 25 captains tell their best stories (illustrated by Jerzovskaja). Ankerherz, Appel 2007, ISBN 978-3-940138-00-2 .
  • Lars Schmitz-Eggen: Monster Waves - When Ships Disappear Without a Trace (The Riddle About Freak Waves) , Edition Walfisch, Bad Zwischenahn 2006, ISBN 978-3-938737-12-5 .

Articles in newspapers and magazines or their web presence

  • Bengt Eliasson, PK Shukla: Instability and Nonlinear Evolution of Narrow-Band Directional Ocean Waves . In: Physical Review Letters Volume 104, 2010, doi: 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.105.014501 .
  • Gary Cleland, Nigel Bunyan, Laura Clout: Ferry rescue after freak wave in Irish Sea . In: The Telegraph , February 1, 2008
  • Instability and Evolution of Nonlinearly Interacting Water Waves . In: Physical Review Letters (Volume 97, Article 094501, 2006)
  • Were extreme waves in the Rockall Trough the largest ever recorded? In: Geophysical Research Letters , Volume 33, 2006, L05613
  • Water - the indomitable element . In: GEO , March 2005 edition
  • Matthias Schulz: I felt the breath of God - the trivialized horror trip of the MS "Bremen" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 2001 ( online ).
  • Roland Fischer, Urs Willmann : Forty meters of water . In: Die Zeit , No. 35/2007

Movie and TV

Movies

Documentation

  • BBC documentary Freak Waves from November 14, 2002
  • Zoe Heron: Monster Waves on the Sea - Ships in Distress (BBC / TLC production), ZDF 2004
  • N24 documentation On the trail of killer waves from March 18, 2007
  • Zoe Heron: "Universe" documentary Die Monsterwelle from 2007

Web links

Commons : Monster Waves  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Monsterwelle  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sverre Haver: Freak Wave Event at Draupner Jacket January 1 1995 . (PDF) In: ifremer.fr , January 2, 2016
  2. ^ Report of Ronald Warwick, Captain of the Queen Elizabeth 2 . In: bbc.co.uk , November 14, 2002.
  3. ↑ Kaventsmann, white wall and three sisters . In: Deutschlandfunk , December 29, 2002.
  4. ↑ The origin of the monster waves . In: Wissenschaft aktuell , September 24, 2009. The article relates to research at the University of Marburg: Höhmann, Kuhl, Stöckmann, Heller, Kaplan: Freak waves in the linear regime: a microwave study . (PDF) In: Physical Review Letters , Volume 104, 2010, 093901
  5. ↑ Karsten Trulsen: Description of the possibilities of creating monster waves - the article includes various theories and literature references (English)
  6. ↑ "Nightmare monster waves - they exist ..." . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , July 28, 2004.
  7. ^ TT Janssen, THC Herbers: Nonlinear Wave Statistics in a Focal Zone. In: Journal of Physical Oceanography, Volume 39, Issue 8 (August 2009) pp. 1948-1964. doi: 10.1175 / 2009JPO4124.1 .
  8. ^ The New York Times , Sept. 26, 1901, p. 16
  9. ^ The New York Times , February 15, 1909, p. 1
  10. ↑ Craig B. Smith: Extreme waves. National Academies Press, 2006. ISBN 0-309-10062-3 . P. 212.
  11. ↑ Ultima Hora of September 21, 1973, page 3 (daily newspaper in Palma de Mallorca)
  12. ↑ to the MaxWave project of ESA .
  13. ↑ "The Monster Waves on the Sea - Ships in Distress" ( Memento from February 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) in the Phoenix documentary in 2004 by Zoe Heron
  14. ↑ "A huge wave floods the 'Bremen'" . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , July 28, 2004
  15. ↑ Japan: Monster waves are said to have sunk fishing boat . In: Spiegel-Online , February 3, 2009.
  16. ↑ "Massive wave is southern hemisphere record, scientists believe" In: BBC News, May 22, 2018, accessed on May 11, 2018
  17. ↑ 100-foot wave recorded off the coast of Newfoundland during Dorian. The Globe and Mail, September 10, 2019, accessed May 5, 2020 .
  18. ↑ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5772130_Optical_rogue_waves DR Solli, C. Ropers, P. Koonath, B. Jalali : Optical rogue waves , Nature 450, 1054 (2007)
  19. ↑ Dong-Il Yeom, Benjamin J. Eggleton: Rogue waves surface in light , Nature 450, 953 (2007).
  20. ↑ Freak Waves. In: Spiegel TV , November 14, 2002 (video).