Sea forecast black sea. Killer waves are not a myth, but a reality

A well-known specialist in the study of sea waves, Professor L. F. Titov drew attention to the fact that in The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, the great poet not only figuratively, but also very correctly, from the point of view of oceanography, described the developing sea waves: “The sea is slightly the blue sea has become clouded... The blue sea is restless... The blue sea has turned black... There is a black storm on the sea: So the angry waves swelled, So they walk, so they howl and howl.

There is a special scale of the state of the sea surface, according to which you can visually determine how many points are on the sea. The scale is only valid for wind waves.

So what is one point? This is a very weak excitement, a ripple. The wind blew - wrinkled the water surface, a gust passed - it is smooth again. What is two points? This is a more noticeable wave. A characteristic sign of a wave of two points is a transparent vitreous foam on the crests of the waves. At three points, white lambs appear on the crests of individual waves, at four points the whole sea is already covered with lambs. If the wind starts to tear off the foam from the crests of the waves - five points of excitement, and when this foam begins to stretch in strips along the slopes of the waves - six points ... In total, the scale of excitement contains nine points. You can judge the storm and the height of the waves.

So, for example, according to this scale, when the sea is rough at one point, the height of the waves does not exceed 25 centimeters, at two points - 25-75 centimeters, at three points - 0.75-1.25 meters ...

The scale of wind strength (where the correspondence of points and meters per second is given) has twelve points. The strength of the storm is determined by the strength of the wind. Therefore, the expression "storm ten points" would be correct, but the expression "ten point excitement" would be incorrect. In the Black Sea, the frequency of strong waves is low. During the storm year itself, a storm of magnitude six to nine is not observed for more than 17 days.

A distinctive feature of the Black Sea waves is their "stability". This is the so-called swell, which has a longer period of oscillation than the wind wave. Swell is a wave that occurs when light wind or without wind ("dead swell"). However, the origin of these waves is associated with the activity of the wind. Waves formed in the storm zone, which is located at this time in the western part of the Black Sea, may come to the Caucasian coast of the sea. Near the Caucasian shores, the winds can be weak, and the wave can be large. This will be the swell. The existence of swell is associated with the concept of the “ninth wave”, which has long been common among our sailors, known to many from the painting by the famous sea painter Aivazovsky. It cannot be said that the idea of the ninth wave was completely without any foundation. The fact is that swell waves, as a rule, go in groups, and in the center of the group there are the largest waves, and at the edges of the wave of a smaller height. Some wave of this group may indeed be much larger than the others, but it is not known which wave it will be in a row - the third, fifth or ninth, and with which wave to start the count. Thus, one should not think at all that it is the ninth wave that is the most terrible. By the way, among the ancient Greeks, every third shaft was considered the most dangerous, and among the Romans - the tenth.

Sailors endure swell more easily than the Azov or Caspian wind wave - "bumpy" with a period of 3-5 seconds. However, the swell has the unpleasant feature that it gives a strong surf near the shore. The wave, almost imperceptible in the sea due to its small steepness, falls on the shore with tremendous force.

Swimming in the sea during a storm is very dangerous. It is usually quite difficult to overcome the zone of breakers and get into the open sea, where you can float relatively calmly, rising and falling with each wave. It is much more difficult for a tired person to get ashore again through a barrier of crumbling and foaming waves. Every now and then he is carried back to the sea. There were cases when people drowned here, even those who knew how to swim well. That is why on city and sanatorium beaches they hang out signs with warning inscriptions during a storm. It is appropriate to recall here that all animals, jellyfish, sea fleas and other organisms leave the dangerous surf zone before a storm, seagulls fly ashore, but you can see how some people choose a storm in order to demonstrate their "bravery" by swinging on the waves .

The force of waves hitting the shores and structures is enormous. Near Sochi, it exceeds 100 tons per square meter. During such impacts, bursts with a height of several tens of meters occur. The colossal energy of breaking waves is spent on crushing rocks And sediment movement. Without the influence of waves, the rivers would gradually roll down to the depth, while the waves return them to the coast and force them to move along it. For example, along the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea there is a constant flow of sediment. From Tuapse to Pitsunda, waves move 30-35 thousand cubic meters of sediment per year.

Where there is a beach, the waves lose most its energy. Where there is none, they destroy the bedrock. During the Great Patriotic War coast erosion south of the port Sochi reached 4 meters per year. Immediately after the end of the war, bank protection works were started in this area, and the erosion of the coast stopped.

A railway runs along the Caucasian coast of the sea. In the coastal zone, sanatoriums, theaters, maritime stations and residential buildings were built. Therefore, the sea coast must be protected from erosion. The best protection in this regard is the beach, where the waves break before reaching the shore. To fix the beaches, groins and underwater breakwaters are being built, which prevent the movement of pebbles along the coast to other areas and its withdrawal into the depths of the sea. This is how the beach grows.

For a long time, groins and underwater breakwaters were considered a model of coastal protection structures. But in recent years, experts have come to the conclusion that artificial reefs, such as those that naturally exist off the coast of Australia, Cuba, and Vietnam, would be more environmentally acceptable. On the Black Sea near Odessa, one such reef, 300 meters long, is already being tested.

Georgian coastal protection specialists have taken a different path: they maintain the beaches with beach material brought from mountain quarries.

One of the currently little-studied issues related to waves is the so-called traction.

The essence of this phenomenon lies in the fact that in many ports of the Black Sea (and in some other ports of the world) ships moored at the berths from time to time begin to move along them more or less periodically under the influence of some kind of force. Sometimes these movements are so powerful that even the steel mooring lines do not withstand and burst, sometimes the ship is forced to stop cargo operations and retreat to the roadstead. The draft can be observed both during strong excitement and in complete calm.

There are several hypotheses about the origin of the tar. All of them define traction as a consequence of the approach of a special kind of sea waves, invisible to the naked eye. These waves are called long-period waves, since they have a period of oscillation much longer than ordinary visible waves.

When sea waves approach the shore, their structure, and in connection with this, the pattern of waves changes. Scientists say that in the coastal zone, the wave begins to "feel the bottom." If the direction of the wave crests is not parallel to the coast line, then the waves turn towards the coast: the part of the crest that goes over greater depths catches up with the other part, which goes closer to the coast over shallower depths. This phenomenon is called wave refraction. It is expressed not only in a change in their direction, but also in the fact that the ridges change their shape. In some areas, for example, in a bay, the waves "stretch" along its shores, so the height of the waves here is less than in the open sea. The ancient sailors knew this. The concentration of wave energy occurs in the capes, as the crests of the waves come from different directions.

O formidable rocks are crushed with the roar of the wave

And with white foam they make noise, they run back ...

As waves move through shallow water, their profile changes. The ridge becomes sharper, leans forward, and the hollow lags behind, experiencing the influence of the bottom. At a depth of about one and a half times the height of the waves, they collapse. A surf is formed. A breaking wave with hissing foam goes far ashore. Near deep coasts, there is usually one line of wave breaking, and on gentle coasts, waves break several times as they move towards the coast.

IN Lately a new, so-called spectral, method for studying sea waves was adopted. The word "spectrum" comes from the Latin word "spectrum", which means "vision". Something bright and beautiful is associated with this word in our mind. This name was given to it by Newton when he first decomposed ordinary, white light into components - red, orange, etc. Now the spectral research method is widely used in science and technology - wherever you can get the dependence of the process energy on frequency or wavelength.

To characterize different types of sea waves, their spectrum is a good indicator. What do the spectra of sea waves look like? The spectrum of wind waves and the spectrum of swell differ from each other in width and shape. Wind waves have a wider spectrum, it covers a large frequency range. It can have waves with periods from 3 to 20 seconds. And the swell spectrum is narrower, that is, the swell waves differ little from each other in frequencies, they are smoother. The form of the spectra of these two types of waves is typical for all seas.

There are sometimes double-humped and multi-peak spectra. They are recorded when two or more wave systems from different directions go to the sea, that is, mixed waves are observed.

So spectra help in the study of sea waves. Now it is no longer enough to say how many points are on the sea, even knowing the height and length or period of the waves is not enough. You need to know what kind of spectrum they have. Spectra allow you to explore and compare with each other different kinds waves, they bring order to “the most disorderly of all natural phenomena on Earth”, as the well-known Soviet oceanographer N. N. Gorsky figuratively called the sea waves.

The word "tsunami" in Japanese means big waves in the harbor. Indeed, they appear in harbors, in bays, in general, in the coastal zone. In the open sea, a ship may not notice them, because their height is centimeters, and their length is kilometers, that is, the waves are very gentle.

In the Soviet Union, tsunamis are observed not only in Kamchatka or Kuril Islands, but also in the Caspian and Black Seas, although here they do not reach such destructive power as the Pacific.

These waves are generated by an underwater earthquake. A ship that finds itself above an earthquake zone feels a jolt, as if it had hit an underwater rock. On some nautical charts rocks have been made in areas where depths are measured in kilometers and soundings do not reveal any bottom uplifts.

Why are there earthquakes in the Black Sea? After all, there are no active volcanoes nearby! But the fact is that earthquakes are not always associated with volcanic activity. Most often they arise as a result of breaks in the earth's crust, which are formed in regions intermediate between sinking and rising regions. Usually, earthquake sources are concentrated in the same zones. On the Black Sea, such zones run parallel to the coast near the Crimea and the Caucasus. The most seismic regions of the Caucasus are Anapa and the vicinity of Sochi. The depth of occurrence of the Black Sea earthquakes can be up to 40 kilometers.

There is an assumption that the cause of the death of the ancient Black Sea cities Sebastopolis and Dioscuria were served by waves from underwater earthquakes - tsunamis. In the Abkhazian legends, a mention of this event has been preserved: “A terrible blow shook the earth. The shore split, and the furious sea swallowed up the city.

Over the past centuries, such strong earthquakes have not been observed in the Caucasus. In Crimea, strong earthquakes (7-8 points on a 12-point scale) were in 1927, their epicenters were in the sea, south of Yalta. These earthquakes caused long (up to 100 kilometers) waves - tsunamis. Their speed was so great that in an hour and a half they reached the coast of Bulgaria, and on other coasts even earlier. But these waves were noted only by instruments and did not cause any damage.

On the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, strong earthquakes - 6 points - were observed in 1905 and 1966 (their epicenters lay in the sea near Anapa). These earthquakes also caused tsunamis that spread throughout the sea and were noted by instruments.

Thus, tsunamis are also possible in the Black Sea, but due to the small extent of earthquake sources and their relatively small strength, they do not harm the coasts.

Interestingly, some fish - inhabitants of great depths - a few days or hours before an earthquake appear on the surface of the water and usually die. But such cases were not observed in the Black Sea, where, as you know, fish do not live at great depths.

To what depth do ordinary (wind) waves propagate? Already at a depth of 10 meters they are smaller than on the surface, but sometimes they are felt there. The movement of water near the bottom during a storm can be characterized by the following example. The underwater laboratory "Chernomor", which worked near Gelendzhik at a depth of 12.5 meters and had a negative buoyancy of 3 tons, was moved by a 4-point storm by 70 meters. The researchers of this laboratory found that quite intense sand movements occur to a depth of 15-20 meters.

In the depths of the sea, at the interface between water layers and different density, so-called internal waves arise.

Experts believe that the action of these waves can explain the death of several submarines: the American Thresher in the North Atlantic in 1963 and the Scorpion in 1968 near Azores; French - "Minerva" in 1968 and "Eridis" in 1970 in the Mediterranean Sea. Several hundred people died in the process.

Although internal waves have been known for a long time, the reasons for their formation are not completely clear. One of them is considered to be a "ripple" in the mass of the current, which occurs when it passes over underwater ridges. Internal waves can also be caused by strong storms and hurricanes on the surface of the water, and tides, and earthquakes.

Internal waves, like surface ones, move, develop, live. They can reach such a height and steepness that they become unstable and topple over. At the same time, the properties of water quickly level out, the jump in density disappears, perhaps this capsizing caused the death of submarines.

Recently, internal waves have been detected in images from space. It turns out that when shooting from such a large distance, these waves can be traced in the form of alternating dark and light bands.

For a long time, waves caused only harm to a person: they lowered the speed of ships, smashed them against coastal structures, and eroded the coast.

Many projects for the use of wave energy have been put forward. Let's talk about some of them.

On the Black Sea coast, an installation designed by D. A. Avtonomov was tested. It is based on filling the pool with water under the action of hydraulic shock - the passage of waves through wedge-shaped channels. From the pool, water enters the turbine.

Another installation was also tested on the Crimean coast, its author S.I. Koltagov. The piston, moving horizontally in the cylinder under the action of waves, drives the water up the pipe into the tank, from where it enters the turbine. After each movement of the piston, the cylinder is filled from another pipe with sea water.

Engineer V. S. Sidorenko created a type of "wave turbine" based on the rotation of a horizontally reinforced pipe during the passage of a wave.

Polish experts proposed to accumulate energy by periodically (under the action of waves) supplying water to a reservoir located above the water level. The impact of each wave opens a valve through which water enters the reservoir through pipes.

The Bulgarian engineer Vedenicharov proposed seven types of wave motors. Some of them he tested on the Black Sea near Varna.

Swedish engineer Dahlström designed a ship that uses wave energy. The ship has a balancer that drives the propeller.

A wave energy buoy operates off the coast of the United States, with a capacity of only 1 kilowatt. The principle of operation is as follows: a 60-meter pipe is lowered down from a floating platform; in the lower part of the pipe, a valve that opens when the pipe is in the wave cavity; the water entering the pipe enters the tank, and from the tank to the turbine that generates the current that feeds the lamp.

A large project for the use of wave energy has been put forward in England, which does not have significant natural sources energy in your area. Along the coast, it is planned to build many original "mills", the blades of which (15X15 meters) will rotate under the influence of waves and transmit their movement to the generator.

No country has yet built a wave power plant. The reason is that the energy obtained in this way will cost more than the energy of other types of power plants, and it is advisable to use it only where all other sources have already been exhausted.

However, the very fact that engineers and scientists in many countries are working hard on the use of wave energy allows us to hope for a successful solution to this problem.

Doctors also became interested in sea waves: slight excitement (one or two points) produces a light body massage, promotes the penetration of sea water salts into the human body, that is, it is a healing factor.

No less interesting is the following question: does the Sun affect marine processes? Observations of the course of various terrestrial phenomena make it possible to note not only their periodicity, but also the coincidence of the periods of oscillations of these processes with the periods of change in solar activity.

What phenomena on Earth have not been tried to compare with the activity of the Sun: a violation of the rhythms of the development of animals and plants, a decrease in reactions in people during periods of active Sun and an increase in the number of deaths among people suffering from diseases of the cardiovascular system, a slowdown in the growth of glaciers, and even the number of earthquakes , according to some scientists, is related to the degree of activity of the Sun.

And how are things in such a small area of the planet as the Black Sea? Analysis of "quiet" and "stormy" years shows that they follow each other in a certain order. So, for the Sochi region in 1952-1954 and 1964-1966, many storms were noted, and 1956-1962 were quiet years. Of course, even in calm years there are separate strong storms. For example, in quiet 1968, an exceptionally strong storm passed on January 28-29, and in quiet 1969, 7-point storms were observed on January 5-6 and October 28-29.

The whole of 1972 can be called a stormy one. The strength of the storm near the coast reached 6-7 points.

Over the past 15 years, storm activity has gradually subsided, but not far off, as it was before, the onset of a storm period.

If we compare the number of storms in the Black Sea with the number of solar flares, we can see that there is a relationship between them.

A major solar flare is almost always followed by a storm. But not every storm is caused by a solar flare. There are many more storms than outbreaks, but every major outbreak causes a storm. During the period of disturbance, the Sun throws out streams of charged particles - corpuscles, the so-called "solar wind" begins. It is still unclear in what way these flows affect the Earth's atmosphere, especially noticeable in this case is the increase in the movement of air masses along the meridians - from north to south and from south to north. In the Black Sea, this means the arrival of southern cyclones and storms from the south.

Astronomers are trying to predict solar flares. First of all, this is necessary so that the astronauts in flight take the necessary measures to protect themselves from cosmic rays that erupt from the flare region along with fluxes of light, ultraviolet, gamma radiation, infrared and radio radiation.

When such forecasts are approved, they can be used for medical purposes, as well as for forecasting storms.

If it were possible to predict quiet and stormy years, this would greatly facilitate the work of ports and secure navigation.

Let's talk about the Black Sea waves. Frequent recurrence strong winds, significant size of the sea, great depths, weak indentation coastline contribute to the development of anxiety. highest heights waves in the Black Sea - 14 meters. The length of such waves is 200 meters. On the way to maximum height waves is 6 meters, length 120 meters.
It is possible to evaluate the excitement not only by the elements of the waves (height, length, period), but also by the degree.

Evaluation of the degree of excitement is made on a special scale. So, for example, on this scale, 1 point - the height of the waves does not exceed 25 centimeters, 2 points - the height of the waves 25-75 centimeters, 3 points - 0.75-1.25 meters, 4 points - 1.25-2 meters. In total, the scale has 9 points. It is possible to describe the state of the sea surface during wind waves: 1 point - the appearance of ripples during gusts of wind, 2 points - transparent vitreous foam appears on the crests of the waves, 3 points - separate white "lambs" appear on the crests of the waves, 4 points - the whole sea is covered with "lambs " etc.

The scale of wind strength (where the correspondence of points and meters per second is given) has 12 points. The strength of the storm is determined by the strength of the wind. Therefore, the expression "storm 10 points" will be correct, but the expression "10 points excitement" is incorrect. In the Black Sea, the frequency of strong waves is low. During the most "stormy" year, a wave of 6-9 points is not observed for more than 17 days.

A distinctive feature of the Black Sea waves is their "stability". This is the so-called swell, which has a longer period of oscillation than the wind wave. A swell is a wave observed with little or no wind ("dead swell"). However, the origin of these waves is associated with the activity of the wind. Waves formed in the storm zone, which is located at this time in the western part of the Black Sea, may come to the Caucasian coast of the sea. Near the Caucasian shores, the winds can be weak, and the wave can be large. This will be the swell. The existence of a swell is associated with the concept of the “ninth wave”, which has long been common among our sailors, known to many from the painting by Aivazovsky. It cannot be said that the idea of the ninth wave was completely without any foundation. The fact is that swell waves, as a rule, go in groups, and in the center of the group there are the largest waves, and at the edges of the wave of a smaller height. Some wave of this group can really be much larger than the others, but it is not known which wave it will be in a row - the third, fifth or ninth, and with which wave to start the count. Thus, one should not think at all that it is the ninth wave that is the most terrible. By the way, among the ancient Greeks, every third shaft was considered the most dangerous, and among the Romans - the tenth.

Stormy sea video on the Black Sea (Anapa)

Swimming in the sea during a storm is very dangerous. It is usually quite difficult to overcome the zone of breakers and get into the open sea, where you can float relatively calmly, rising and falling with each wave. It is much more difficult for a tired person to get ashore again through a barrier of crumbling and foaming waves. Every now and then he is carried back to the sea. There were cases when even people who knew how to swim well drowned here. That is why on city and sanatorium beaches they hang out signs with warning inscriptions during a storm. It is appropriate to recall here that all animals, jellyfish, sea fleas and other organisms leave the dangerous surf zone before the storm, seagulls fly ashore, however, you can see how some people choose the time of the storm in order to demonstrate their “bravery” by swinging on waves.

The force of the waves hitting the shores and structures is enormous. Near Sochi, it exceeds 100 tons per square meter. During such impacts, bursts with a height of several tens of meters occur. The colossal energy of breaking waves is spent on crushing rocks and moving sediments. Without the influence of waves, the rivers would gradually roll down to the depth, while the waves return them to the coast and force them to move along it. For example, along Caucasian coast The Black Sea is a constant flow of sediment. From Tuapse to Pitsunda, waves move 30-35 thousand cubic meters of sediment per year.

Where there is a beach, the waves lose most of their energy. Where there is none, they destroy the bedrock. During the Great Patriotic War, the erosion of the coast south of the port of Sochi reached 4 meters per year. Immediately after the end of the war, bank protection works were started in this area, and the erosion of the coast stopped.

Along the Caucasian coast of the sea passes Railway. Theaters, maritime stations and residential buildings were built in the coastal zone. Therefore, the sea coast must be protected from erosion. The best protection in this regard is the beach, where the waves break before reaching the shore. To fix the beaches, groins and underwater breakwaters are being built. These structures prevent the movement of pebbles along the coast to other areas and its withdrawal into the depths of the sea. This is how the beach grows.

Are there tsunami waves in the Black Sea caused by earthquakes, as we have on Far East? There are tsunamis, but they are very weak. They are recorded only by devices and are not even felt by a person.

To what depth do ordinary waves propagate? Already at a depth of 10 meters they are smaller than on the surface, and at a depth of 50 meters they are completely invisible. Maybe in the depths reigns peace, which nothing disturbs? No, it's not. There are their own, so-called internal waves. They differ from surface ones in their size (tens of meters in height and kilometers in length), and the reasons for their origin are different. They arise, as a rule, at the interface between two layers with different densities. Although they are not visible on the surface, submarines face great difficulties during such an “underwater storm”.

Lazarevskoye Resort microdistrict of the city of Sochi, Krasnodar Territory Everything about Lazarevskoye (where to go, where to eat, etc.) is here http://lazarevskoe-more.rf/blog/. IN administrative District Lazarevsky includes many villages, towns and auls: Soloniki, Ashe, Golovinka, Kichmai, Vishnevka, the most remote - Makopse, Loo. Lazarevskoye is very popular due to the relative proximity of the main entertainment and food facilities. Climate. The mild subtropical climate of Lazarevsky welcomes vacationers with palms and cypresses. bathing season lasts from early June to October. average temperature air during the season reaches +27°С, water +25°С. Caucasian mountains close Lazarevskoye from the winds, so the sea here is warm and very calm. Beach. The beaches of the resort are mostly pebbly, without breakwaters. Sea water clean and transparent, and the bottom is sandy and without deep holes, which is especially pleasing to tourists with children. Things to do. Clean sea air, sunbathing, green mountains - ideal conditions for development sanatorium complexes in Lazarevsky. The resort has everything natural factors For quality treatment, For example, mineral springs and healing mud. In addition to relaxing on sun-warmed beaches and swimming in the sea, vacationers are offered a lot of all kinds of entertainment. Two water parks - Nautilus and Starfish- located in different parts of the village. In one of the two dolphinariums there is an opportunity for children and adults to ride along with dolphins. Recently, I began to take excursions to the Penguinarium in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Starfish water park, where not only penguins are represented, but also exotic animals, birds and insects. Another Penguinarium is located in the central park, near the Embankment. Night lovers can spend the rest of the evening at foam parties and discos, bars and billiards. IN Central park there are many different attractions for every taste. The avenue of exotic plants will take tourists who are tired of long walks under the scorching sun. A few years ago, a new Ferris wheel was installed in the Park - 82.5 m, which is today the highest in Russia and the third in Europe. . Movie premieres are always held at the Lazarevsky cinema. Interesting places. For those who want to touch history, we strongly recommend visiting ethnographical museum, in the exhibition halls of which you can see a lot of interesting things, household items, weapons and clothing of the peoples who previously lived in Sochi. Many depart from here interesting excursions. Active, walking, inquisitive. You will be able to visit beautiful places, admire the beauties of mountains and waterfalls, plunge into cool waters, take part in horseback riding, dive into the depths of the sea, go fishing in lakes or in the sea ... Lazarevskoye is undoubtedly the pearl of the Sochi region. Every year the resort attracts more and more tourists from different cities and countries. Vacationers go to the gentle sea, turn their faces to the scorching sun and spend quiet warm evenings, listening to the sound of the surf. All this makes the rest in this place bright and unforgettable!

The season of storms will soon begin in the Black Sea, and the report on killer waves, made at the 1st International Forum of Young Scientists in Sevastopol, came in handy. As it turned out, they meet with us.

Killer waves, or wandering waves, monster waves are giant single waves 20-30 meters high, sometimes more, that occur in the ocean and have behavior uncharacteristic of sea waves. They have a different origin from the tsunami and have long been considered fiction. However, within the framework of the MaxWave project (“Maximum Wave”), which involved monitoring the surface of the World Ocean using the European Space Agency (ESA) ERS-1 and ERS-2 radar satellites, recorded for three weeks around the globe more than 10 singles giant waves whose height exceeded 25 meters. This forced the scientific community to reconsider their views and, despite the impossibility of mathematical modeling of the process of occurrence of such waves, to recognize the fact of their existence.

We learned about this and many other things at the forum during the report of Irina Didenkulova, laureate of the Presidential Prize in the field of science and innovation for 2014.

The first mentions of such waves are found in myths. Ancient Greece and in the descriptions of the wanderings of Columbus. For a long time it was believed that all this was the invention of sailors. But then lonely 30-meter waves were recorded in the Atlantic from satellites. The research was given a boost by alarmed insurance companies after a 26-meter lone wave was recorded in the Norwegian Sea in 1995, destroying an oil platform.

The occurrence of killer waves is not only characteristic of the oceans, this phenomenon can appear in any body of water. For the first time in the Black Sea, such a wave was recorded in November 2001 on the shelf near Gelendzhik. The wave height was 10.3 meters, the length reached 20 meters. The recorded indicators are a significant danger not only for the Black Sea shipping, but also for vacationers on the beaches, who can be carried into the sea even by a two-meter wave.

How often do such waves occur?

According to the scientist, a killer wave appears every 8-9 hours - this is a lonely wave that appears absolutely suddenly and, unlike a tsunami, for no apparent reason. The height of such a wave is at least twice average height some of the biggest waves in a given period of time. Such a wave may not necessarily be dangerous - with a small general excitement, the “killer” will also be weak. However, during a storm, the danger is extremely high.

“It was believed that one of 3 thousand waves becomes a killer wave. But when the research became more systematic, it became clear that the “killers” are much more common,” says Didenkulova.

These waves are dangerous not only because of their height, but also in shape. Often this is not a sloping "mountain", but a wall, the blow of which not every ship can withstand.

Over the past 50 years, 22 supertankers have died from killer waves, the scientist said. They are also dangerous for tourist ships. So, on March 2, 2010, the Luis Majesty cruise ship, sailing from Cartagena to Genoa, collided in the Marseille region with three killer waves of 8 meters each (they were later called “three sisters”). Glass was shattered on the ship, people were killed.

Two more examples. During a surfer competition in California, two anomalous big waves hit the coast, which they had not reached before, demolished the fence on the coast and washed away the people watching the competition.

Earlier in South Africa A 9-meter wave, which significantly exceeded all previous and subsequent ones in height, washed away people walking along the pier.

Didenkulova names several reasons for the emergence of killer waves.

“For example, when a current and a wave move towards each other, the current gradually slows down the waves, which leads to an unexpected surge. Either the interaction of waves with various speeds- at some point they merge into one, and you get a killer wave. No less dangerous coastal zone: in shallow water, the waves interact with each other and with the bottom, with the shore, which also contributes to the emergence of killer waves, ”says the scientist.