'Walls of Water' Hit without a Warning

New research from the University of Oxford in collaboration with the University of Western Australia, however, shows that the anecdotal evidence may not be so far from the truth. Rather than coming at the end of a series of increasingly large waves, rogue (or freak) waves emerge suddenly, being preceded by much smaller waves.

The mathematical modelling also demonstrates that the crests of these rogue waves are longer than the smaller waves that surround them.

The research is published in the journal  Proceedings of the Royal Society A .

Professor Thomas Adcock, of Oxford's Department of Engineering Science, said: "The waves we're dealing with here occur in deep water in the open ocean - very different from the waves you'll see if you go to the beach, which is what most people are familiar with.

"In deep water, where waves are much less regular, you expect a larger wave from time to time. Our paper shows that, in contrast to what was previously thought, if you're the observer on a ship, rather than seeing a gradual build-up of waves, the rogue wave will come seemingly out of nowhere.

"This happens because large waves tend to move to the front of the wave group."

The research made use of mathematical modelling based on non-linear physics. The investigators used hundreds of simulations of random waves to analyse the differences between linear and non-linear wave dynamics.

Source: Phys.Org

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