Swells tracking across Indian Ocean

My internet friend and fellow blogspot blogger Rob Storm send me this news this morning that says "Satellite image radar captures giant 36 ft wave that hit Reunion Island." I blogged about the giant/freaque waves at the Reunion Island in mid May. But the EU scientists are really making the best use of the satellite technology. In particular Bertrand Chapron of IFREMER, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, and Fabrice Collard of France's BOOST Technologies in Brest located and tracked the swells using standard processed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ESA products. Their results of tracking swells propagating across the Indian Ocean is just fantastic! Please see their super cool annimation at the ESA site. (I might add Bertrand Chapron is a friend, I met him when he was a care-free, brilliant young Post Doc at NASA while I was participating on the ONR SWEDE program and visited NASA's Wallops Island facitity a few times. In fact many of my wavelet analysis studies were based on a MATLAB program written by Bertrand.)

There is still no indication of where or when freaque waves have occurred if ever. But this is certainly a major step forward toward further advances. Whereever giant swells go, freaque waves may or may not be just around the corner. Nevertheless, beware!