Dashing Rogues

The Nov. 18, 2006 issue of the weekly Science News magazine published a very good feature article on freaque waves entitled "Dashing Rogues." It is one of the best media article written on freaque waves I have ever read. Of course I can not deny the fact that I am a little biased because I was interviewed on the phone by the author, Sid Perkins, who was in the audience when I presented my paper in the OMAE conference in Hamburg last June and the article referenced to 3 of my publications. Still this is a superbly well-written article nevertheless, only the second one on freaque waves from the Science News since the one by Ivars Peterson 10 years ago.




















While Perkins started with my general contention that "There's no clear definition of what a rogue wave is," he went on and gave the best ever eloquent description which anyone read the article can understand:

"A wave typically achieves rogue status not by growing to a certain minimum size but by exceeding the surrounding waves by a certain proportion. The basis for comparison is an oceanographic parameter called significant wave height, which researchers typically calculate by taking the average of the tallest one-third of the waves in a particular patch of ocean. Many scientists define a wave as a rogue if it's 2.2 times as tall as the significant wave height."

Two thumbs up for this article!