Towering rogue waves exist in the ocean. Scientists just recreated one.

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At 3:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day in 1995, work stopped on the deck of the Norwegian Draupner oil platform, which stood isolated out in the middle of the tempestuous North Sea. The wind had grown too strong, the waves roiled below, and it was no longer safe to be outside. 

But one wave dwarfed the others. It measured 84-feet tall — about two and a half times the height of a telephone pole — and was thereafter named the “Draupner wave.” Fortunately, the monstrous swell didn’t reach the platform’s deck.

The Draupner wave was the first scientific evidence of a rare rogue or freak wave, which is a wave that appears suddenly and measures at least twice as tall as the surrounding waves. These fleeting, colossal phenomena are thought to be possible culprits for the still-unexplained sinking of ships in the open ocean.  Read more…

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View More Towering rogue waves exist in the ocean. Scientists just recreated one.

Waves in Europe are getting higher, threatening coastal residents

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Massive waves poured over English sea defenses during the cold and stormy winter of 2013-2014. These waves were the most powerful scientists have ever recorded on Europe’s Atlantic coastline.

The storms that generated these waves may have been unusually intense, but they were part of a trend that is putting coastal communities at greater risk. In a study published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists found that wave heights have risen everywhere along the west coast of Europe — from Scotland down to coastlines north of Portugal — over nearly the last 70 years. 

Taller waves can wash over traditional defenses against storms, and flood communities that lie behind these sea walls.  Read more…

More about Science, Extreme Weather, Climate Change, Coastal Flooding, and Waves

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The rise of the Crypto accelerators

 As cryptocurrency fever grips the tech world, and blockchain technologies gradually become more viable, there is a new wave of accelerators and incubators appearing to service this growing ecosystem. Some are covering funding and services, some are about services only. It’s fair to assume, however, that some kinds of cryptocurrency will be changing hands, of course, not to mention the… Read More

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