Recordhigh 23m wave in Southern Ocean
AUCKLAND: A massive storm in the Southern Ocean has just produced the biggest wave recorded there — reaching higher than a sevenstorey building.
The 23.8mhigh monster wave was detected about midnight last night by a buoy operated by sciencebased consultancy MetOcean Solutions and deployed near subantarctic Campbell Island by HMNZS Wellington in March.
MetOcean Solutions senior oceanographer Tom Durrant said the wave was the highest he and his colleagues had seen.
The wave formed in the middle of a huge and deep storm, in a part of the world where persistent westerly winds and an unlimited area for waves to build combined to make the largest waves in the world.
The latest wave surpassed a 19.4m wave recorded in the area in May last year by another MetOcean Solutions device that had since broken from its buoy.
It was recorded as a ‘‘significant wave height’’ — reaching the average measurement of the highest third of waves, something which corresponded well to our own visual estimates of wave height.
Dr Durrant expected waves reaching higher than 25m would eventually be revealed by the company’s array of instruments in the region.
By comparison, 25m is the height of 16 cars stacked on top of each other, or an eightstorey building.
During the depths of winter, Southern Ocean waves are enormous. Significant wave heights average more than 5m, and regularly exceed 10m.
Accurate measurements will help researchers understand waves and airsea interactions in these extreme conditions.
This would lead to improvements in the models used to simulate the waves, providing better forecasts, both for the Southern Ocean and for the wider region.
Dr Durrant said waves more than 20m high were highly hazardous to vessels.
In a dramatic video, waves which reached 16m were seen to crash over the bow of the offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Otago as it returned from a Southern Ocean patrol in 2015.
Ships tended to negotiate heavy seas by sailing headon into the direction from which the waves were coming. But, particularly in the Southern Ocean, this could prove challenging when vessels faced long, large swells from one side and shorter, steeper seas from another.
There was little shipping traffic in the Southern Ocean; the vessels that were operating ranged from icebreakers and research boats, to fishing vessels and small cruise liners. —