What is the name of the largest sea wave. How Rogue Killer Waves Appear

killer waves

Photo of a large wave approaching a merchant ship. Circa 1940s

killer waves (Rogue waves, monster waves, white wave, English rogue wave- rogue wave freak wave- wave-moron, scumbag; fr. onde scalerate- villainous wave, galejade- bad joke, draw) - giant single waves that arise in the ocean, 20-30 (and sometimes more) meters high, and have behavior uncharacteristic of sea waves. Real "killer waves" that pose a danger to ships and offshore structures: the structures of a ship that encounters such a wave may not withstand the enormous pressure of the water that has fallen on it (up to 980 kPa, 9.7 atm), and the ship will sink in a matter of minutes.

An important circumstance that allows us to single out the phenomenon of killer waves as a separate scientific and practical topic, and to separate it from other phenomena associated with waves of abnormally large amplitude (for example, tsunamis), is the appearance of "killer waves" out of nowhere. Unlike tsunamis, which are the result of underwater earthquakes or landslides and gain height only in shallow water, the appearance of “killer waves” is not associated with catastrophic geophysical events. These waves can appear with low winds and relatively weak waves, which leads to the idea that the very phenomenon of "killer waves" is associated with the peculiarities of the dynamics of the sea waves themselves and their transformation when propagating in the ocean.

For a long time, wandering waves were considered fiction, since they did not fit into any mathematical model of the emergence and behavior of sea waves (from the point of view of classical oceanology, waves higher than 20.7 meters cannot exist in the oceans of the Earth), and there were not enough reliable evidence. However, on January 1, 1995, a wave 25.6 meters high, called the Dropner wave, was first recorded on the Dropner oil platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. Further research within the framework of the MaxWave project (“Maximum wave”), which included monitoring the surface of the world's oceans using the European Space Agency (ESA) radar satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2, recorded more than 10 single giant waves around the globe in three weeks whose height exceeded 25 meters. These studies are forcing a new look at the causes of death over the past two decades of ships of the size of container ships and supertankers, including killer waves among the possible causes.

The new project is called Wave Atlas (Atlas of waves) and provides for the compilation of a worldwide atlas of observed killer waves and its statistical processing.

Causes

It is possible that the reason for the emergence of giant solitary waves is the movement of a high atmospheric pressure front in the direction of the zone with a certain certain speed. low pressure(expansion of the high pressure zone), as described in the work of V. N. Shumilov. With such an "advance" of the high pressure front, a phenomenon almost analogous to the surge of water in the shallow eastern part of the Baltic Sea occurs, when the water level in the Neva in St. Petersburg rises by several meters.

Another possible cause interference maxima are called when waves of different directions propagating in the water column are superimposed. In this case, the zones of sea currents are called the most probable zones of wave formation, since in them the waves caused by the inhomogeneity of the current and the unevenness of the bottom are the most constant and intense.

Another reason for the occurrence of such waves may be the difference in the energy potentials of different layers of water, which, under certain circumstances, “discharges”, as in the atmosphere during a thunderstorm or tornado. Upper layer water, saturated with oxygen, accumulates a positive electrical potential, and the deep layers containing dissolved methane, low-valent oxides of iron, manganese, etc., negative, under certain conditions, this energy can cause disturbances and the movement of large masses of water. A ship, a submarine, some object, a lightning strike, a splash or something else, can simply close the contacts in the circuit and start the “wave engine”, and it will be able to work both “for suction”, with a suction funnel, and for pushing a mass of water to the surface.

Interestingly, such waves can be both crests and troughs, which is confirmed by eyewitnesses. Further research involves the effects of nonlinearity in wind waves, which can lead to the formation of small groups of waves (packets) or individual waves (solitons) that can travel long distances without significant changes in their structure. Similar packages have also been repeatedly observed in practice. Characteristic features of such groups of waves, confirming this theory, is that they move independently of other waves and have a small width (less than 1 km), and the heights drop sharply at the edges.

Numerical simulation of rogue waves

Direct modeling of rogue waves was undertaken in the works of V. E. Zakharov, V. I. Dyachenko, R. V. Shamin. The equations describing the unsteady flow of an ideal fluid with a free surface were solved numerically. Using a special type of equations, it was possible to carry out calculations with great accuracy and over large time intervals. In the course of numerical experiments, characteristic profiles for rogue waves were obtained, which are in good agreement with the experimental data.

In the course of a large series of computational experiments on modeling the dynamics of surface waves of an ideal fluid, which have physical parameters characteristic of the ocean, empirical functions of the frequency of occurrence of rogue waves depending on the steepness (~energy) and dispersion of the initial data were constructed.

Experimental observation

One of the problems in studying rogue waves is the difficulty of obtaining them in the laboratory. Basically, researchers are forced to work with data obtained from observations in vivo, and such data are very limited due to the unpredictable nature of the appearance of the killer wave.

In 2010, for the first time, Peregrine breather solitons were experimentally obtained, which, according to many scientists, are a possible prototype of killer waves. These solitons, which are a particular solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, were obtained for an optical system, but already in 2011, the same solitons were also obtained for water waves. In 2012, in another experiment, scientists managed to experimentally demonstrate the generation of a higher-order breather soliton, for which the amplitude is five times the amplitude of the background wave.

Notable cases

• In April 1966, in the mid-Atlantic, the Italian transatlantic liner Michelangelo was hit by a white wave, two passengers were washed into the sea, 50 were injured. The ship received serious damage to the bow and one of the sides.

• In September 1995, the British transatlantic liner "Queen Elizabeth 2" in the North Atlantic during Hurricane Louis tried to "ride" a 29-meter wave that appeared straight ahead.

Killer waves in art

• In the 2006 film Poseidon, the passenger liner Poseidon, sailing in the Atlantic Ocean on New Year's Eve, became a victim of a killer wave. The wave turned the ship upside down, and after a few hours it sank.
• Ridley Scott's film "White Squall" tells about the death of a training ship from a sudden squall followed by the appearance of a huge wave.
• The Perfect Storm is an adventure drama based on real events that took place during Hurricane Grace on the coast of America.

Notes

Links

• Pelinovsky E. N., Slyunyaev A. V. “Freaks” - killer sea waves // Priroda, No. 3, 2007.
• S. Badulin, A. Ivanov, A. Ostrovsky. Impact of giant waves on the safety of offshore production and transportation of hydrocarbons
• Kurkin A. A., Pelinovsky E. N. “Rogue waves: facts, theory and modeling”, Nizhny Novgorod. state those. un-t. N. Novgorod, 2004.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Killer Waves" are in other dictionaries:

Continuum mechanics classical mechanics... Wikipedia

Continuum Mechanics ... Wikipedia

Killer waves (Wandering waves, monster waves) are giant single waves with a height of 20 30 (and sometimes more) meters that occur in the ocean and have behavior uncharacteristic of sea waves. They should not be confused with tsunamis that occur in ... ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Wave (meanings). A wave is a change in the state of a medium or a physical field (disturbance), propagating or oscillating in space and time or in phase space. In other words, ... ... Wikipedia

The headline sounds like it's about another anti-scientific study that the yellow newspapers love to operate with. A man from Mars, pyramids built by aliens, killer waves - it would seem that a completely logical series. In fact, this is really a scientific term that refers to incredibly huge waves wandering the ocean that can swallow almost any ship. Unlike a completely predictable tsunami or storm, a rogue wave appears quite suddenly, growing in a giant shaft on the way, ready to swallow all life in its path. As you know, fear has big eyes. Therefore, for a long time the existence of killer waves was considered a sea tale and even a myth. But it was exactly until someone from the crew of the ship, on the way of which another wave got in the way, filmed this monster on video. Interestingly, the amplitude of the occurrence of waves almost does not depend on the size of the reservoir and the weather. We have put together everything that we currently know about the phenomenon, which is feared by all sailors going out into the open ocean.

A giant solitary wave, completely unpredictably appearing in the vastness of the ocean, has long been considered an idle invention of the easy to frightening stories of sailors. And only in the last century, scientists actually received documented evidence of the existence of this phenomenon. The killer wave can reach up to 30 meters - this, for a moment, is the height of a fourteen-story building. The strangest thing is that they appear almost suddenly - researchers still have not been able to draw up any, even an approximate algorithm for their appearance. Consequently, almost every ship that has entered the open sea is in danger of being "attacked" by such a giant monster.

No one has fully understood the exact causes of this dangerous phenomenon. Or rather, there are so many factors that may well contribute to the formation of a killer wave that it is simply impossible to bring them to a common denominator. For example, ordinary waves can move towards the flow that slows them down at one point, unite and turn into one giant wave. Shallow water also contributes to this, where the waves interact with each other, the bottom and the current at the same time. Therefore, it becomes impossible to timely predict the appearance of a killer wave, which means that it is also not realistic to protect yourself from them in advance.

For a very long time, giant rogue killer waves were considered idle fiction. And this is completely understandable - you just read the title again! In addition, the existing mathematical model of the appearance of sea waves simply did not allow the existence of a suddenly emerging wall of water more than twenty meters high. But on January 1, 1995, mathematicians had to develop the analytical system again: the wave that appeared at the Dropner oil platform exceeded 25 meters. The myth turned out to be true, and for a long time the sailors did not know whether to rejoice at the confirmed bike, or start to be afraid of quite real killer waves.

The appearance of the Dropner wave initiated the development of a new research project aimed at studying the phenomenon. MaxWave scientists have begun using radar satellites to monitor the entire surface of the world's oceans. In less than a month, the researchers found a dozen waves exceeding 25 meters.

Another loud headline, and again - completely justified. The so-called "Catalogue of killer waves" was compiled by the famous oceanologist Irina Didenkulova. She decided to collect absolutely all available information not only from official sources, but also from navigation sites, media data and even YouTube videos. The result was a very even and competent statistical picture of the occurrence of these terrible waves. Not all scientists are ready to consider the "catalog of death" as a serious scientific study, but the data presented here really allow us to bring the phenomenon to a common denominator.

Oceanologists were sure that giant killer waves can only occur in the oceans. Until the data on the crash of the USS Edmund Fitzgerald, which occurred on Lake Superior, USA, were confirmed. As it turned out, local residents have been observing an amazing phenomenon on this lake for many years: several times a year, the surface of the water gives rise to three huge waves following each other, each about 25 meters high. They were called "Three Sisters".

Untimely fixation of the terrible and extremely unusual phenomenon of killer waves led to the fact that the loss and death of many ships remained unsolved. But now that the fundamental existence of such a phenomenon has been scientifically proven, researchers can compile a list of the most terrible disasters that occurred through their fault. In the last decade, there have been several dangerous collisions with killer waves: the Norwegian Dawn liner met three 24-meter waves at once, but remained afloat. In 2001, two ships (the Bremen liner and the Caledonia Star scientific vessel) were less fortunate: several crew members disappeared from both ships.

The water element can be truly formidable! Just imagine what a person will feel when a wave is approaching, 30 meters high (about the size of a 9-story building). This unusual and rather rare natural phenomenon is called the “killer wave”. More recently, oceanologists attributed it to, but today scientists have irrefutable evidence of the existence of super-waves.

A killer wave, also called a rogue or white wave, appears as if from nowhere. It is absolutely impossible to predict the time and place of its formation. A huge mass of water, the size of which reaches 20..30 meters or more, poses a threat even to modern liners. A ship hit by a killer wave will sink much faster than the legendary Titanic. This will take no more than a few minutes.

Neptune's Terrible Revenge

The seafarers of the Middle Ages evoked awe and fear of the water element. There were numerous rituals designed to propitiate Neptune, the ruler of the seas and oceans. The Vikings carved drakkars from ash in the bow of their boats. Sea robbers believed that noble tree has the ability to "take away" storms and storms.

Of course, modern sailors no longer show honors to Neptune. But this does not mean that some natural phenomena cannot inspire superstitious horror even to an inveterate skeptic. People who were lucky enough to survive after meeting with a killer wave say that it “appeared as if from nowhere and disappeared to no one knows where.”

Does the killer wave generate infrasound?

Ancient sea legends tell about sirens - mythical mermaid women who lure sailors to the very bottom. According to beliefs, their voices are able to cloud the mind of a person and make him go to any madness, for example, throw himself overboard. Sometimes it even happened that the entire crew of the ship immediately turned out to be overboard. Subsequently, other navigators who encountered an empty ship could well have mistaken it for a legendary one.

You ask, what is the connection between the myth of the sirens and the huge killer wave? We'll have to do small digression, and tell the reader about such an interesting natural phenomenon as infrasound. This term refers to a low-frequency sound that is not audible to the human ear, but meanwhile is able to influence the body. Some people begin to feel bad, others become confused.

At sea, infrasound can sometimes occur during a storm. Under influence natural phenomenon people start to have hallucinations. For example, sailors may feel that the ship is on fire, which prompts them to throw themselves overboard. It is believed that it was infrasound that gave rise to legends about female sirens.

Now the most interesting thing is that some researchers suggest that the giant killer wave is also capable of generating infrasound. If this is true, then those who meet her at sea have little chance of survival.

Why do they appear?

One of the most popular hypotheses about the causes of the rogue wave is based on the superposition of waves different lengths. If to speak plain language, several relatively small waves "merge" into one huge wave, which "lives" for some time, and then disappears. However, the calculations performed showed that the likelihood of this hypothesis is negligible.

Of interest is the fact that a killer wave can be not only a crest, but also a trough. However, the ship, faced with a natural trap, this will not be easier. Just imagine an unexpected fall into the abyss of the sea to the depth of a nine-story building!

Researchers of paranormal phenomena have also become interested in a phenomenon whose nature cannot be explained by scientists. According to one of the versions put forward, anomalous activity can become the cause of the appearance of superwaves. Some even suggest that the Atlantean race is still living at the bottom and is developing new technologies. Ufologists hypothesize that the appearance of killer waves is associated with UFO experiments.

Encounters with killer waves

The first documented case of a ship colliding with a killer wave occurred on February 7th, 1933. The victim of the raging elements was the ship "Ramapo", which belonged to the armed maritime forces USA. An incredibly high shaft ambushed the ship in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. People who were lucky enough to survive recorded a wave of 34 meters moving at a speed of about 85 km / h.

In April 1966, the Michelangelo liner became another victim of the water element, which was hit by a wandering wave in the middle of the Atlantic. One of the sides and the bow of the ship was seriously damaged, 50 people were injured, and two passengers were washed out to sea.

The last time a sea "killer" was observed was in September 1995. This incident was recorded by the personnel of the Queen Elizabeth 2 liner. Brave sailors tried to "saddle" a huge shaft, 29 meters high. The place of collision with a natural phenomenon was the North Atlantic.

We invite you to watch the movie "Killer Wave" online. This short ten-minute video will surely arouse interest among fans of mysticism and marine themes.

Over thousands of years of navigation, people have learned to deal with the dangers of the water element. Pilots indicate a safe path, weather forecasters warn of storms, satellites watch for icebergs and other dangerous objects. However, it is still not clear how to protect yourself from a thirty-meter wave, which suddenly appears without visible reasons. Fifteen years ago, mysterious killer waves were considered fiction.

Sometimes the appearance of giant waves on the surface of the ocean is quite understandable and expected, but sometimes they are a real mystery. Often such a wave is a death sentence for any ship. The name of these riddles is killer waves.

It is unlikely that you will find a sailor who has not been baptized by a storm. Because, to paraphrase a well-known saying, to be afraid of storms is not to go out to sea. Since the dawn of navigation, the storm has been the best test of both courage and professionalism. And if the favorite theme of the memories of war veterans is past battles, then the “sea wolves” will certainly tell you about the whistling wind that rips off radio antennas and radars, and the huge roaring waves that almost swallowed their ship. Which, perhaps, was "the most-most."

But already 200 years ago, it became necessary to clarify the strength of the storm. Therefore, in 1806, the Irish hydrographer and Admiral of the British Navy Francis Beaufort (Francis Beaufort, 1774-1875) introduced a special scale according to which weather at sea was classified depending on the degree of wind impact on the water surface. It was divided into thirteen steps: from zero (complete calm) to 12 points (hurricane). In the twentieth century, with some changes (in 1946, it was 17-point), it was adopted by the International Meteorological Committee - including for the classification of winds on land. Since then, hats have been involuntarily taken off in front of a sailor who has passed a 12-point “excitement” - because they at least heard a lot about what it is: billowing huge shafts, the tops of which are blown by a hurricane into continuous clouds of spray and foam.

However, for a terrible phenomenon that regularly hits the Southeast tip North American continent, in 1920 a new scale had to be invented. This is a five-point Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, which evaluates not so much the power of the elements as the destruction that it produces.

According to this scale, a Category 1 hurricane (wind speed 119-153 km/h) breaks tree branches and causes some damage to small boats at the pier. Category 3 hurricane (179-209 km/h) knocks down trees, rips off roofs and destroys light prefabricated houses, floods the coastline. The most terrible hurricane of the fifth category (more than 255 km / h) destroys most buildings and causes serious flooding - driving large masses of water onto land. That was the infamous Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005.

The Caribbean Sea, where up to ten hurricanes forming in the Atlantic annually from June 1 to November 30, has long been considered one of the most dangerous areas for navigation. And living on the islands of this basin is by no means safe - especially in a poor country like Haiti - where there is neither a normal warning service, nor the ability to evacuate from a dangerous coast. In 2004, Hurricane Jenny killed 1,316 people there. The wind, roaring like a squadron of jet aircraft, blew away the dilapidated huts along with their residents, brought down palm trees on the heads of people. And from the sea, foaming shafts rolled on them.

One can only imagine what the crew of the ship is experiencing, having fallen into the "very hot" of such a hurricane. However, it happens that ships do not die during a storm at all.

April 2005 a cruise ship The Norwegian Dawn, leaving the fabulous Bahamas, was heading for New York Harbor. The sea was slightly stormy, but a huge 300-meter ship could afford to simply not notice such excitement. Two and a half thousand passengers had fun in restaurants, walked along the decks and took pictures for memory.

Suddenly, the liner banked sharply, and in the next seconds a giant wave hit its side, knocking out the windows of the cabins. She swept through the ship, sweeping away sun loungers in her path, overturning boats and jacuzzis installed on deck 12, knocking passengers and sailors off their feet.

“It was a real hell,” said James Frahley, one of the passengers who celebrated his honeymoon on the liner with his wife. Streams of water rolled across the decks. We began to call relatives and friends to say goodbye, deciding that the ship was dying.

So "Norwegian Dawn" faced one of the most mysterious and terrible ocean anomalies - a giant killer wave. In the West, they have received various names: freak, rogue, rabid-dog, giant waves, cape rollers, steep wave events, etc.

The ship was very lucky - he escaped with only minor damage to the hull, property washed overboard and injured passengers. But the wave that suddenly hit him did not get his sinister nickname for nothing. The liner could well have suffered the fate of the Hollywood "Poseidon" - turned upside down in the film of the same name. Or, even worse, just break in half and drown, becoming the second Titanic.

Back in 1840, during his expedition, the French navigator Dumont D'Urville (Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont d'Urville, 1792-1842) observed a giant wave about 35 m high. But his message at a meeting of the French Geographical Society caused only ironic laughter. None of the pundits could believe that such waves could exist.

The study of this phenomenon was taken seriously only after the English cargo ship Derbyshire sank off the coast of Japan in 1980. As the survey showed, the ship, almost 300 meters long, was destroyed by a giant wave that broke through the main cargo hatch and flooded the hold. 44 people died. In the same year, the oil tanker Esso Languedoc collided with a killer wave off the coast of South Africa.

“It was stormy, but not strong,” said senior mate Philippe Lijour. English magazine New Scientist, - Suddenly, a huge wave appeared from the stern, many times higher than all the others. She covered the whole ship, even the masts disappeared under the water.

While the water rolled across the deck, Philip managed to grab a picture of it. According to him, the shaft shot up at least 30 meters. The tanker was lucky - he stayed afloat. However, these two cases were the last straw that caused companies involved in the export-import of raw materials to panic. After all, it was believed that it was not only economically profitable to transport it on giant ships, but also safer - they say that such ships, which are “knee-deep sea”, are not afraid of any storm.

Alas! Between 1969 and 1994 alone, twenty-two supertankers sank or were seriously damaged in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, killing five hundred and twenty-five people. Twelve more such tragedies during this time occurred in the Indian Ocean. Offshore oil platforms also suffer from them. So, on February 15, 1982, a killer wave overturned a Mobil Oil drilling rig in the Newfoundland Bank area, killing eighty-four workers.

But also large quantity small craft(trawlers, pleasure yachts), when meeting with killer waves, they simply disappear without a trace, without even having time to send a distress signal. Giant water shafts, as high as a fifteen-story building, crushed or smashed boats. The skill of the helmsmen did not save either: if someone managed to turn around with his nose to the wave, then his fate was the same as that of the unfortunate fishermen in the movie "The Perfect Storm": the boat, trying to climb the ridge, became vertical - and broke down, falling into the abyss with the keel up.

Killer waves usually occur during a storm. This is the same “ninth wave” that sailors are so afraid of - but, fortunately, not everyone happens to encounter it. If the height of ordinary storm crests is on average 4-6 meters (10-15 in a hurricane), then a wave suddenly arising among them can reach a height of 25-30 meters.

However, rarer, and much more dangerous killer waves appear in fairly calm weather - and this is not called otherwise than an anomaly. At first, they tried to justify them by the collision of sea currents: most often such waves appear at the Cape of Good Hope (the southern tip of Africa), where warm and cold streams join. It is there that sometimes the so-called. "three sisters" - three giant waves following one after another, climbing which, supertankers break under their own weight.

But reports of deadly ramparts came from other parts of the world. They were also seen on the Black Sea - “only” ten meters high, but this was enough to turn over several small trawlers. In 2006, such a wave hit the British ferry "Pont-Aven" (Pont-Aven), following the Pas de Calais. She broke windows at six deck height, injuring several passengers.

What prompts the sea surface to suddenly rise up in a giant shaft? Both serious scientists and amateur theorists develop a variety of hypotheses. Waves are fixed by satellites from space, their models are created in research pools, but they still cannot explain the reasons for all cases of rogue waves.

But the causes that cause the most terrible and destructive sea waves - tsunamis - have long been established and studied.

Seaside resorts are not always a paradise on the planet. Sometimes they become a real hell - when suddenly, in clear and sunny weather, giant water shafts collapse on them, washing away entire cities in their path.

... These shots went around the world: unsuspecting tourists who, out of curiosity, went to the bottom of a suddenly receding sea to pick up a few shells and starfish. And suddenly they notice how a rapidly approaching wave appears on the horizon. The poor fellows try to run away, but a muddy, seething stream overtakes and captures them, and then rushes to the whitening houses on the coast ...

The disaster that broke out on December 26, 2004 in South-East Asia shocked mankind. A giant wave swept away everything in its path, diverging across the Indian Ocean. Sumatra and Java, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh, Thailand suffered, the wave even reached the east coast of Africa. The Andaman Islands went under water for several hours - and the local natives miraculously survived, escaping on the tops of trees. As a result of the disaster, more than 230 thousand people died - it took more than a month to find and bury all of them. Millions of people were left homeless and homeless. The tragedy turned out to be one of the largest and most tragic natural disasters in the history of mankind.

"High wave entering the harbor" - this is how the word "tsunami" is translated from Japanese. In 99% of cases, tsunamis occur as a result of an earthquake on the ocean floor, when it drops or rises sharply. Just a few meters, but over a huge area - and this is enough to cause a wave that scatters from the epicenter in a circle. In the open sea, its speed reaches 800 km / h, but it is almost impossible to notice it, since its height is only about one, maximum two meters - but with a length of up to several kilometers. The ship under which it will sweep will only shake slightly - that is why, having received a warning, the ships tend to leave the ports and go as far as possible into the sea.

The situation changes when the wave approaches the shore, in shallow water (enters the harbor). Its speed and length drop sharply, but its height grows - up to seven, ten or more meters (cases of 40-meter tsunamis are known). It bursts onto land as a solid wall and has tremendous energy - that's why tsunamis are so destructive and can pass several hundred, and sometimes thousands of meters along the ground. And each tsunami strikes twice. At first - when it falls on the shore, flooding it. And then - when the water begins to return to the sea, carrying away those who survived after the first blow.

In 1755, called devastating earthquake The tsunami claimed the lives of 40,000 Portuguese. A formidable ocean wave hit Japan on June 15, 1896: the wave height reached 35 meters, then 27 thousand people died, and all coastal towns and villages in the 800 km strip ceased to exist. In 1992, 2,000 inhabitants of the Indonesian islands were killed by a tsunami.

Experienced residents of coastal cities and towns in seismically dangerous areas know that as soon as an earthquake begins, and after it a sudden and rapid ebb, you need to drop everything and run without looking back to a hill or inland. In a number of regions that regularly suffer from tsunamis (Japan, Sakhalin, Hawaii), special warning services have been created. They fix an earthquake in the ocean and immediately give an alarm to all the media and through the street loudspeakers.

But tsunamis can be caused by more than just earthquakes. The explosion in 1883 of the Krakatoa volcano caused a wave that hit the islands of Java and Sumatra, washing away more than 5,000 fishing boats, about 300 villages and killing more than 36,000 people. And in Lituya Bay (Alaska), a tsunami caused a landslide that brought down a mountainside into the sea. The wave spread over a limited area, but its height was grandiose - over three hundred meters, while, having fallen on the opposite bank, it licked the bushes at a height of 580 meters!

However, this is not the limit. The largest and most destructive waves are born when large meteorites or asteroids fall into the ocean. However, fortunately, this happens extremely rarely - once every few million years. But then this cataclysm takes the scale of a truly planetary flood. For example, German scientists found that about 200 million years ago a large cosmic body. It raised a tsunami over one kilometer high, which broke into the continental plains, destroying all life in its path.

Killer waves should not be confused with tsunamis: tsunamis occur as a result of seismic events and gain high height only close to the coast, while killer waves can appear for no known reason, almost anywhere in the sea, with light wind and relatively little waves. Tsunamis are dangerous for coastal structures and ships close to the shore, while a killer wave can destroy any ship or offshore structure that it encounters.

Where do these monsters come from? Until recently, oceanographers believed that they formed as a result of well-known linear processes. According to the prevailing theory, large waves are simply the product of interference, in which small waves are combined into one large one.

In some cases, this is exactly what happens. good to that an example is the waters off Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African continent. There the Atlantic and Indian Ocean s. Ships around the cape are regularly attacked by huge waves, which are formed as a result of the collision of the fast Agulhas current and winds blowing from the south. The movement of water slows down, and the waves begin to pile on top of each other, forming giant shafts. In addition, superwaves can often be found in the Gulf Stream, the Kuroshio Current south of the coast of Japan, and the infamous waters of Cape Horn, where the same thing happens - fast currents collide with opposing winds.

However, the interference mechanism is not suitable for all giant waves. Firstly, it is in no way suitable to justify the appearance of giant waves in places like the North Sea. There are no fast currents at all.

Secondly, even if interference occurs, giant waves should not occur so often. Their absolute majority should gravitate towards the average height - some are slightly higher, others are slightly lower. Giants of double size should appear no more than once during a human life. However, in reality, things are quite different. Oceanographic observations suggest that most waves are smaller than average, and real giants are much more common than we think. Orthodox oceanography gets pierced below the waterline.

A killer wave is usually described as a rapidly approaching wall of water of great height. In front of it moves a depression several meters deep - a "hole in the sea". Wave height is usually specified precisely as the distance from the highest point of the crest to the lowest point of the trough. By appearance"killer waves" are divided into three main types: " white wall", "three sisters" (group of three waves), single wave ("single tower").

To appreciate what they can do, just look at the photograph of the Wilstar above. The surface on which such a wave falls can experience pressure of up to one hundred tons per square meter (about 980 kilopascals). A typical twelve-meter wave threatens only six tons per square meter. Most modern ships can handle up to 15 tons per square meter.

According to the observations of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), killer waves are scattered and non-scattering. Those who do not dissipate can travel quite a long distance by sea: from six to ten miles. If the ship notices a wave from afar, you can have time to take some action. Scattering ones appear literally from nowhere (apparently, such a wave attacked the "Taganrog Bay"), collapse and disappear.

According to some experts, killer waves are dangerous even for helicopters flying low over the sea: first of all, rescue ones. Despite the seeming improbability of such an event, the authors of the hypothesis believe that it cannot be ruled out and that at least two cases of loss of rescue helicopters are similar to the result of a giant wave strike.

Scientists are trying to figure out how the energy in the ocean is redistributed in such a way that the formation of killer waves becomes possible. The behavior of nonlinear systems like the sea surface is extremely difficult to describe. Some theories use the non-linear Schrödinger equation to describe the occurrence of waves. Some are trying to apply the existing descriptions of solitons - single waves of an unusual nature. In the latest study on this topic, scientists managed to reproduce a very similar phenomenon in electromagnetic waves However, this has not yet led to practical results.

Some empirical data on under what conditions the occurrence of rogue waves is more likely to occur is still known. So, if the wind drives waves against a strong current, then this can lead to the appearance of high steep waves. This is notorious, for example, for the Cape of Needles (in which the Wilstar suffered). Other high risk areas are the Kuroshio Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Sea and surrounding areas.

Experts call the following prerequisites for the emergence of a killer wave:

1. area of ​​low pressure;
2. wind blowing in one direction for more than 12 consecutive hours;
3. waves moving at the same speed as the area of ​​low pressure;
4. waves moving against a strong current;
5. fast waves catching up with slower waves and merging with them together.

The absurd nature of killer waves, however, is manifested in the fact that they can also occur when the listed conditions are not met. This unpredictability is the main mystery for scientists and danger for sailors.

They managed to escape

1943 North Atlantic. The cruise ship Queen Elizabeth falls into a deep ravine and is subjected to two powerful wave impacts in a row, which cause serious damage to the bridge - twenty meters above the waterline.

1944 Indian Ocean. British Navy cruiser Birmingham sinks into deep hole, after which a giant wave falls on its bow. According to the ship's commander's notes, the deck, eighteen meters above sea level, is knee-deep in water.

1966 North Atlantic. On the way to New York, the Italian steamer Michelangelo is hit by a wave eighteen meters high. Water rushes into the bridge and first class cabins, killing two passengers and one crew member.

1995, North Sea. The floating drilling rig Weslefrikk B, owned by Statoil, is seriously damaged by a giant wave. According to one of the crew members, a few minutes before the impact, he saw a "wall of water".

1995 North Atlantic. While crossing to New York, the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship is caught in a hurricane and takes a twenty-nine-meter high wave on its bow. “It felt like we were crashing into the White Cliffs of Dover,” says Capt. Ronald Warrick.

1998, North Atlantic. BP Amoco's Sheehallion floating production platform is hit by a giant wave that blows its tank superstructure at a height of eighteen meters above the water level.

2000, North Atlantic. Having received a distress call from a yacht 600 miles from the Irish port of Cork, the British cruise ship Oriana is hit by a twenty-one-meter high wave.

6. Sea waves.

© Vladimir Kalanov,
"Knowledge is power".

The surface of the sea is always mobile, even with complete calm. But then the wind blew, and ripples immediately appear on the water, which turns into excitement the faster, the stronger the wind blows. But no matter how strong the wind is, it cannot cause waves larger than certain largest sizes.

Wind waves are considered to be short waves. Depending on the strength and duration of the wind, their length and height range from a few millimeters to tens of meters (during a storm, the length of wind waves reaches 150-250 meters).

Observations of the sea surface show that the waves become strong already at a wind speed of more than 10 m / s, while the waves rise to a height of 2.5-3.5 meters, crashing onto the shore.

But now the wind turns into storm and the waves are huge. There are many places on the globe where very strong winds blow. For example, in the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean, east of the Kuril and Commander Islands, as well as east of the main Japanese island of Honshu, in December-January, the maximum wind speeds are 47-48 m/s.

In the South Pacific Ocean, maximum wind speeds are observed in May in the area northeast of New Zealand (49 m/s) and near the Antarctic Circle in the area of ​​Balleny and Scott Islands (46 m/s).

We perceive speeds expressed in kilometers per hour better. So the speed of 49 m / s is almost 180 km / h. Already at a wind speed of more than 25 m / s, waves 12-15 meters high rise. This degree of excitement is rated 9–10 points as a severe storm.

Measurements have established that the height of a storm wave in the Pacific Ocean reaches 25 meters. There are reports that waves with a height of about 30 meters were observed. True, this assessment was made not on the basis of instrumental measurements, but approximately, by eye.

In the Atlantic Ocean, the maximum height of wind waves reaches 25 meters.

The length of storm waves does not exceed 250 meters.

But now the storm has stopped, the wind has died down, and the sea is still not calming down. Like the echo of a storm on the sea arises swell. Swell waves (their length reaches 800 meters or more) move over vast distances of 4-5 thousand km and approach the shore at a speed of 100 km / h, and sometimes even higher. In the open sea, low and long swell waves are invisible. When approaching the shore, the speed of the wave decreases due to friction on the bottom, but the height increases, the front slope of the wave becomes steeper, foam appears at the top, and the crest of the wave crashes onto the shore with a roar - this is how the surf appears - a phenomenon just as colorful and majestic, how dangerous. The force of the surf is colossal.

Faced with an obstacle, the water rises to a great height and damages lighthouses, port cranes, breakwaters and other structures. Throwing stones from the bottom, the surf can damage even the highest and farthest parts of lighthouses and buildings from the coast. There was a case when the surf tore off the bell from one of the English lighthouses from a height of 30.5 meters above sea level. The surf on our Lake Baikal sometimes in stormy weather throws stones weighing up to a ton at a distance of 20-25 meters from the shore.

The Black Sea during storms in the Gagra region was washed away and swallowed up in 10 years foreshore 20 meters wide. When approaching the shore, the waves begin their destructive work from a depth equal to half their length in the open sea. So, with a storm wave length of 50 meters, typical for such seas as the Black or Baltic, the impact of waves on the underwater coastal slope begins at a depth of 25 m, and at a wavelength of 150 m, typical for the open ocean, such an impact begins already at a depth of 75 m.

The direction of the currents affects the size and strength of sea waves. With oncoming currents, the waves are shorter, but higher, and with passing currents, on the contrary, the height of the waves decreases.

Near the boundaries of sea currents, waves of an unusual shape resembling a pyramid often appear, and dangerous whirlpools that suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear. In such places, navigation becomes especially dangerous.

Modern ships have high seaworthiness. But it happens that, having overcome many miles on a raging ocean, ships find themselves in even greater danger than at sea when they come to their native bay. The mighty surf, breaking the multi-ton reinforced concrete breakwaters of the dam, is capable of turning even a large ship into a pile of metal. In a storm, it is better to wait a little before entering the port.

To combat the surf, specialists in some ports tried to use air. A steel pipe with numerous small holes was laid on the bottom of the sea at the entrance to the bay. Air under high pressure was fed into the pipe. Escaping from the holes, streams of air bubbles rose to the surface and destroyed the wave. This method has not yet found wide application due to insufficient efficiency. It is known that rain, hail, ice and thickets of marine plants calm the waves and surf.

Sailors have also noticed long ago that tallow thrown overboard flattens the waves and lowers their height. Animal fat, such as whale blubber, works best. The effect of the action of vegetable and mineral oils is much weaker. Experience has shown that 50 cm 3 of oil is sufficient to reduce waves in an area of ​​15,000 square meters, that is 1.5 hectares. Even a thin layer of oil film noticeably absorbs the energy of oscillatory movements of water particles.

Yes, it's all true. But, God forbid, we do not in any way recommend the captains of sea vessels to stock up on fish or whale oil before a voyage in order to then pour these fats into the waves to calm the ocean. After all, things can reach such an absurdity that someone will start pouring into the sea both oil and fuel oil, and diesel fuel to appease the waves.

It seems to us that The best way wave control consists in a well-established meteorological service, which notifies ships in advance of the expected place and time of the storm and its expected strength, in good navigation and pilot training of sailors and coastal personnel, as well as in the constant improvement of the design of ships in order to improve their seaworthiness and technical reliability.

For scientific and practical purposes, it is necessary to know the full characteristics of the waves: their height and length, the speed and range of their movement, the power of an individual water shaft and the wave energy in a particular area.

The first wave measurements were made in 1725 by the Italian scientist Luigi Marsigli. AT late XVIII- at the beginning of the 19th century, Russian navigators I. Kruzenshtern, O. Kotzebue and V. Golovin carried out regular observations and measurements of waves during their voyages across the World Ocean. The technical basis for measurements in those days was very weak, of course, there were no special instruments for measuring waves on sailboats of that time.

Currently, for these purposes, there are very complex and accurate instruments that are equipped with research ships that perform not only measurements of wave parameters in the ocean, but also much more complex scientific work. The ocean still keeps a lot of secrets, the disclosure of which could bring significant benefits to all mankind.

When they talk about the speed of waves, about the fact that waves run up, roll onto the shore, you need to understand that it is not the water mass itself that moves. The particles of water that make up the wave practically do not make translational motion. Only the waveform moves in space, and the water particles in the rough sea make oscillatory movements in the vertical and, to a lesser extent, in the horizontal plane. The combination of both oscillatory movements leads to the fact that in fact the water particles in the waves move along circular orbits, the diameter of which is equal to the height of the wave. The oscillatory motion of water particles decreases rapidly with depth. Precise instruments show, for example, that with a wave height of 5 meters (storm wave) and a length of 100 meters, at a depth of 12 meters, the diameter of the wave orbit of water particles is already 2.5 meters, and at a depth of 100 meters - only 2 centimeters.

Long waves, unlike short and steep ones, transmit their movement to great depths. In some photographs of the ocean floor down to a depth of 180 meters, the researchers noted the presence of sand ripples formed under the influence of oscillatory movements of the bottom layer of water. This means that even at such a depth, the surface disturbance of the ocean makes itself felt.

Is it necessary to prove how dangerous a storm wave is for ships?

In the history of navigation, there are countless tragic cases at sea. Died and small longboats, and high-speed sailing ships, along with the teams. Not immune from the insidious elements and modern ocean liners.

On modern ocean-going ships, among other devices and instruments that ensure safe navigation, stabilizers are used that prevent the ship from getting an unacceptably large list on board. In some cases, powerful gyroscopes are used for this, in others - retractable hydrofoils that level the position of the ship's hull. Computer systems on ships they are in constant communication with meteorological satellites and other spacecraft, prompting navigators not only the location and strength of storms, but also the most favorable course in the ocean.

In addition to surface waves, there are also internal waves in the ocean. They form at the interface between two layers of water of different density. These waves move more slowly than surface waves, but can have a large amplitude. They detect internal waves by rhythmic changes in temperature at different depths of the ocean. The phenomenon of internal waves has not yet been studied enough. It has only been precisely established that waves arise at the boundary between layers with a lower and a higher density. The situation may look like this: there is complete calm on the surface of the ocean, and a storm is raging at some depth, internal waves are divided along the length, like ordinary surface waves, into short and long ones. For short waves, the length is much less than the depth, while for long waves, on the contrary, the length exceeds the depth.

There are many reasons for the appearance of internal waves in the ocean. The interface between layers with different densities can be unbalanced by a moving large vessel, surface waves, and sea currents.

Long internal waves manifest themselves, for example, in the following way: a layer of water, which is a watershed between denser (“heavy”) and less dense (“light”) water, first slowly rises for hours, and then unexpectedly falls by almost 100 meters. Such a wave is very dangerous for submarines. After all, if a submarine sank to a certain depth, then it was balanced by a layer of water of a certain density. And suddenly, unexpectedly, a layer of less dense water appears under the hull of the boat! The boat immediately sinks into this layer and sinks to a depth where less dense water can balance it. But the depth may be such that the water pressure will exceed the strength of the hull of the submarine, and it will be crushed in a matter of minutes.

According to the conclusion of American experts investigating the causes of the death of the Thresher nuclear submarine in 1963 in the Atlantic Ocean, this submarine was in just such a situation and was crushed by huge hydrostatic pressure. Naturally, there were no witnesses to the tragedy, but the version of the cause of the disaster is confirmed by the results of observations carried out by research ships in the area of ​​​​the death of the submarine. And these observations showed that internal waves with a height of more than 100 meters often arise here.

A special type are waves that occur at sea when atmospheric pressure changes. They're called seiches and microseiches. Oceanology is the study of them.

So, we talked about both short and long waves at sea, both surface and internal. And now let's remember that long waves arise in the ocean not only from winds and cyclones, but also from processes occurring in the earth's crust and even in deeper regions of the "inside" of our planet. The length of such waves many times exceeds the longest waves of the ocean swell. These waves are called tsunami. In terms of height, tsunami waves are not much higher than large storm waves, but their length reaches hundreds of kilometers. The Japanese word "tsunami" means roughly translated "port wave" or "coastal wave" . To some extent, this name conveys the essence of the phenomenon. The fact is that in the open ocean, a tsunami does not pose any danger. At a sufficient distance from the coast, the tsunami does not rage, does not produce destruction, it is impossible to even notice or feel it. All the troubles from the tsunami occur on the coast, in ports and harbors.

Tsunamis occur most often from earthquakes caused by the movement of tectonic plates. earth's crust, as well as from violent volcanic eruptions.

The mechanism of tsunami formation is most often as follows: as a result of the displacement or rupture of a section of the earth's crust, a sudden rise or fall of a significant section of the seabed occurs. As a result, there is a rapid change in the volume of the water space, and elastic waves appear in the water, propagating at a speed of about one and a half kilometers per second. These powerful elastic waves generate tsunamis on the surface of the ocean.

Having arisen on the surface, tsunami waves scatter in circles from the epicenter. At the place of origin, the height of the tsunami wave is small: from 1 centimeter to two meters (sometimes up to 4-5 meters), but more often in the range from 0.3 to 0.5 meters, and the wavelength is huge: 100-200 kilometers. Invisible in the ocean, these waves, approaching the shore, like wind waves, become steeper and higher, sometimes reaching a height of 10-30 and even 40 meters. Having fallen ashore, tsunamis destroy and destroy everything in their path and, worst of all, bring death to thousands, and sometimes tens and even hundreds of thousands of people.

The speed of tsunami propagation can be from 50 to 1000 kilometers per hour. Measurements show that the speed of a tsunami wave varies in proportion to the square root of the depth of the sea. On average, a tsunami rushes through the open expanse of the ocean at a speed of 700-800 kilometers per hour.

Tsunamis are not regular occurrences, but they are not so rare anymore.

In Japan, tsunami waves have been recorded for over 1300 years. On average, destructive tsunamis hit the Land of the Rising Sun every 15 years (small tsunamis that did not have serious consequences are not taken into account).

Most tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean. Tsunamis raged in the Kuril, Aleutian, Hawaiian, Philippine Islands. They also attacked the coasts of India, Indonesia, North and South America, as well as European countries located on the Atlantic coast and in the Mediterranean.

The last most devastating tsunami invasion was the terrible flood of 2004 with enormous destruction and loss of life, which had seismic causes and originated in the center of the Indian Ocean.

In order to have an idea about the specific manifestations of a tsunami, one can refer to numerous materials that describe this phenomenon.

We will give just a few examples. This is how the press described the results of an earthquake that occurred in the Atlantic Ocean not far from the Iberian Peninsula on November 1, 1755. It caused terrible destruction in the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. Until now, in the center of the city, the ruins of the once majestic building of the Karmo convent rise, which was never restored. These ruins remind the inhabitants of Lisbon of the tragedy that came to the city on November 1, 1755. Shortly after the earthquake, the sea receded, and then a wave 26 meters high hit the city. Many residents, fleeing the falling debris of buildings, left the narrow streets of the city and gathered on the wide embankment. The surging wave washed away 60 thousand people into the sea. Lisbon was not completely flooded because it is located on several high hills, but in low places the sea flooded the land up to 15 kilometers from the coast.

August 27, 1883 there was a powerful eruption of the volcano Kratau, located in the Sunda Strait of the Indonesian archipelago. Clouds of ash rose into the sky strongest earthquake, which generated a wave with a height of 30-40 meters. In a few minutes, this wave washed away into the sea all the villages located on the low shores of the western part of Java and the south of Sumatra, 35 thousand people died. At a speed of 560 kilometers per hour, tsunami waves swept across the Indian and Pacific oceans, reaching the shores of Africa, Australia and America. Even in the Atlantic Ocean, despite its isolation and remoteness, in some places (France, Panama) a certain rise in water was noted.

On June 15, 1896, tsunami waves destroyed 10,000 houses on the east coast of the Japanese island of Honshu. As a result, 27 thousand people died.

It is impossible to fight a tsunami. But it is possible and necessary to minimize the damage that they bring to people. Therefore, now in all seismically active areas where there is a threat of the formation of tsunami waves, special warning services have been created, equipped with the necessary equipment, receiving signals from sensitive seismographs located in different places along the coast about changes in the seismic situation. The population of such areas is regularly instructed on the rules of conduct in case of a threat of tsunami waves. The tsunami warning services in Japan and the Hawaiian Islands have repeatedly given timely alarms about the approach of a tsunami, which saved more than one thousand human lives.

All types of currents and waves are characterized by the fact that they carry colossal energy - thermal and mechanical. But humanity is not able to use this energy, unless, of course, we count attempts to use the energy of the ebb and flow. Some scientist, probably a lover of statistics, calculated that the power of sea tides exceeds 1000000000 kilowatts, and all rivers the globe- 850000000 kilowatts. The energy of one square kilometer of a stormy sea is estimated at billions of kilowatts. What does this mean for us? Only that a person cannot use even a millionth of the energy of tides and storms. To some extent, people use wind energy for electricity and other purposes. But that, as they say, is another story.

© Vladimir Kalanov,
"Knowledge is power"