This talk highlights renowned scientist Christopher Clark's research on
the effects of sonar, shipping noise and offshore energy activities on
marine mammals at both local and ocean-basin scales. His work has been cited by his peers including Peter Tyack's 2010 TED Talk on whale communications. When asked what he does, Christopher W. Clark’s answer is simple: “I listen to this singing planet!” Clark
pioneered the ocean listening systems for studying whales and other
marine life.
His work has been cited by Peter Tyack's 2010 TED Talk on
whale communications.
His research has led to a better understanding of
the effects of sonar, shipping noise and offshore energy activities on
marine mammals at both local and ocean-basin scales.
Most recently, Clark was featured in Discovery Channel documentary films: “Racing Extinction”
and “Sonic Sea.”
An
engineer and biologist, Clark is the founding director and Imogene
Johnson Senior Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bioacoustics
Research Program at Cornell University.
He is also a senior scientist at
the university’s Department of Neurobiology & Behavior.
Rogue wave photo taken from the deck of the RV Cape Henlopen in the
western North Atlantic during the Atlantic Remote Sensing Land/Ocean
Experiment (ARSLOE)
The crest of the rogue propogates from the right to
left.
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science scientist Mark Donelan and his Norwegian Meteorological
Institute colleague captured new information about extreme waves, as one
of the steepest ever recorded passed by the North Sea Ekofisk platforms
in the early morning hours of Nov. 9 2007.
Photo by Sohit Sukla
Within the first hour of the day, the Andrea wave passed by a
four-point square array of ocean sensors designed by the researchers to
measure the wavelength, direction, amplitude and frequency of waves at
the ocean surface.
Aerial view from southwest (elevation 45 degrees) of the reconstructed Andrea wave.
The colorbar indicates surface elevation. Vertical exaggeration is seven.
The blue dot (location: 0,0) indicates the observed crest of 14.97 m above MSL; the red dot indicates the reconstructed maximum crest height of 15.33 m at location: 14 m West, 6 m North.
The crest was advancing to the SSE (164 degrees) at 17.85 m/s.
Using the information from the wave set—a total of 13,535 individual
waves—collected by the system installed on a bridge between two offshore
platforms, the researchers took the wave apart to examine how the
components came together to produce such a steep wave.
The data from the 100-meter wide “wall of water” moving at 40 miles
per hour showed that Andrea may have reached heights greater than the
recorded height of 49 feet above mean sea level.
They also found that
rogue waves are not rare as previously thought and occur roughly twice
daily at any given location in a storm.
The findings showed that the
steeper the waves are, the less frequent their occurrence, which is
about every three weeks at any location for the steepest rogues.
Surface elevation of groups in each period band displayed on axes of time and logarithm of period in seconds.
All 32 periods are displayed and their sum (divided by 20) is graphed along the time axis.
The Andrea crest is at 862 s.
Credit: Donelan, et.al.
The Andrea crest height was 1.63 times the significant height
(average height of the one third highest waves).
Optimal focusing of the
Andrea wave showed that the crest could have been even higher and
limited by breaking at 1.7 times the significant height.
A 100-foot wave hits a ship in the North Sea, during an intense storm.
Had the ship been much smaller it could have been catastrophic, but the ship managed to withstand the blow.
This
establishes the greatest height rogues can reach for any given (or
forecasted) significant height.
“Rogue waves are known to have caused loss of life as well as damage
to ships and offshore structures,” said Mark Donelan, professor emeritus
of ocean sciences at the UM Rosenstiel School. “Our results, while
representing the worst-case rogue wave forecast, are new knowledge
important for the design and safe operations for ships and platforms at
sea.”
The study, titled “The Making of the Andrea Wave and other Rogues,”
was published in the March 8 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.
The authors include: Donelan and Anne-Karin Magnusson from the Norwegian
Meteorological Institute.
The work was partly performed within the
ExWaMar project (ID 256466/O80) funded by the Norwegian Research
Council.
ConocoPhillips provided the wave data.