http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/257.html


"Bob Crantz" wrote in message
ink.net...
Long thought to be a myth, freak waves as high as 10-storey buildings are
far more common than previously thought, the European Space Agency has
found.

Severe weather has been responsible for the sinking of more than 200
supertankers and container ships over the past two decades, and rogue
waves
are believed to be the main cause, the agency said.

Three weeks of imaging data by the agency's satellites from early 2001
showed more than 10 individual giant waves around the globe of more than
25
metres in height. Previously, scientists believed that such large waves
occurred only once every 10,000 years.

"Having proved they exist in higher numbers than anyone expected, the next
step is to analyse if they can be forecast," said Wolfgang Rosenthal, a
scientist at the GKSS research centre in Geesthacht, Germany.

In February 1995, the QE2 encountered a 29-metre rogue wave in the North
Atlantic that Captain Ronald Warwick described as "a great wall of water -
it looked as if we were going into the White Cliffs of Dover", the agency
said.

And in the week between February and March 2001, two tourist cruisers, the
Bremen and the Caledonian Star, had their bridge windows smashed by
30-metre
rogue waves in the South Atlantic. The Bremen was left drifting without
navigation or propulsion for some hours.

"The same phenomenon could have sunk many less lucky vessels. Two large
ships sink every week, on average, but the cause is never studied in the
same detail as an air crash. It simply gets put down to 'bad weather'," Dr
Rosenthal said.

Reuters