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  • HIGHWAVE is an interdisciplinary project at the frontiers of coastal and ocean engineering...

    HIGHWAVE is an interdisciplinary project at the frontiers of coastal and ocean engineering...

  • Waves, an infinite source of energy for the humanity

    Waves, an infinite source of energy for the humanity

  • and questions for scientists...

    and questions for scientists...

  • Why do waves break?

    Why do waves break?

  • How do they dissipate energy?

    How do they dissipate energy?

  • ...and why is this important?

    ...and why is this important?

  • Predicting the onset of breaking of water waves...

    Predicting the onset of breaking of water waves...

  • to improve wave breaking physics, sea state and ocean weather forecasting models.

    to improve wave breaking physics, sea state and ocean weather forecasting models.

  • in the west of Ireland, storms in the winter of 2013–2014 transported boulders inland distances up to 222 m.

    in the west of Ireland, storms in the winter of 2013–2014 transported boulders inland distances up to 222 m.

  • sometime at elevations up to 29 m above high water...

    sometime at elevations up to 29 m above high water...

  • ...storm-wave energies on coasts remains to be fully understood...

    ...storm-wave energies on coasts remains to be fully understood...

  • Quantifying coastal boulders deposits dynamics helps us understand the transmission of wave energies inshore during high-energy storm events.

    Quantifying coastal boulders deposits dynamics helps us understand the transmission of wave energies inshore during high-energy storm events.

Giant rogue waves on the ocean are a mysterious phenomenon as much the stuff of legend as of science. Despite much anecdotal evidence of their destructive power, their scientific study has proven elusive, mainly because of the danger and difficulty of making measurements in the natural environment of the open sea. This changed dramatically in 2007, however, when researchers showed that injecting powerful ultrafast laser pulses into an optical fibre could generate similar large amplitude waves – but waves of light and not of water.

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Figure above: Timeline illustrating the parallel developments in fibre optics (top) and hydrodynamics (bottom).

The ability to use light waves to mimic the properties of ocean waves stimulated researchers worldwide to use the analogy between light and water waves to improve our understanding of rogue waves on the ocean, and to study ways by which such destructive events may be predicted. After more than ten years of work by hundreds of researchers worldwide, more than 1500 research papers have been published on the topic, and many features of rogue waves have now become well understood.

This extensive state of the art has now been reviewed in a major publication in Nature Reviews Physics by an international research team from Ireland, France, Finland and Australia. Reviewing both the historical aspects of the field as well as current developments in optics, wave tanks and field measurements on the ocean, the paper aims to provide a valuable resource for all workers interested in giant wave phenomena. The paper also suggests important new directions for further study, from new techniques to analyse ocean wave data, to the practical development of new approaches to generate ultrashort laser pulses.

Rogue waves and analogies in optics and oceanography - M. Dudley, G. Genty, A. Mussot, A. Chabchoub, F. Dias

Nature Reviews Physics 1, DOI 10.1038/s42254-019-0100-0 (2019)

 

 

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