Utilizing seven centuries of oceanic wave data, encompassing over a billion wave observations, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Victoria have employed advanced artificial intelligence techniques to find a formula for how to predict the occurrence of these maritime monsters.
Long believed to be mere myths, freakishly large rogue waves are very real and can split apart ships and even damage oil rigs. By analyzing seven centuries’ worth of data from over a billion ocean waves, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Victoria have employed artificial intelligence to devise a predictive formula for these formidable sea giants. The new knowledge can make shipping safer.
Stories about monster waves, called rogue waves, have been the lore of sailors for centuries. But when a 26-metre-high rogue wave slammed into the Norwegian oil platform Draupner in 1995, digital instruments were there to capture and measure the North Sea monster. It was the first time that a rogue had been measured and provided scientific evidence that abnormal ocean waves really do exist.
Since then, these extreme waves have been the subject of much study. And now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have used AI methods to discover a mathematical model that provides a recipe for how – and not least when – rogue waves can occur.
With the help of enormous amounts of big data about ocean movements, researchers can predict the likelihood of being struck by a monster wave at sea at any given time.
“Basically, it is just very bad luck when one of these giant waves hits. They are caused by a combination of many factors that, until now, have not been combined into a single risk estimate. In the study, we mapped the causal variables that create rogue waves and used artificial intelligence to gather them in a model that can calculate the probability of rogue wave formation,” says Dion Häfner.
Häfner is a former Ph.D. student at the Niels Bohr Institute and first author of the scientific study, which has just been published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Rogue waves happen every day
In their model, the researchers combined available data on ocean movements and the sea state, as well as water depths and bathymetric information. Most importantly, wave data was collected from buoys in 158 different locations around US coasts and overseas territories that collect data 24 hours a day. When combined, this data – from more than a billion waves – contains 700 years’ worth of wave height and sea state information.
The researchers analyzed the many types of data to find the causes of rogue waves, defined as being waves that are at least twice as high as the surrounding waves – including extreme rogue waves that can be over 20 meters high. With DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2306275120