On the Ocean
Ocean Waves Part 2: Wave climate
Waves are diverse in their appearance and behavior, at times calm and gentle, and at others incredibly destructive, as in the case of severe storms like hurricanes. Violent winds create powerful waves which may destroy coastal communities, reshape coastlines, or interrupt ship traffic. For this reason, predicting and understanding the sea state is important to oceanographers.
In the same way meteorologists predict weather, oceanographers try to predict the state of waves; how high will waves be, what direction will they travel, and how does the wave state change throughout the year? Wave climate refers to the average character of waves in a region in the same way that climate normally refers to the average weather conditions of a region.
Studying and predicting wave climate is important for many industries, including shipping, fishing, recreation, and offshore industrial operations like oil exploration and extraction. Waves can cause major stress to machinery designed to bring oil to the surface from the sea floor. This machinery must be built to withstand the strongest possible waves they might encounter; if equipment can only withstand 1 m waves, and a 3 m wave passes through the area, it could cause damage to the machinery and a possible ecological and economic disaster in the form of an oil spill. Should an event like an oil spill occur, understanding waves can also be useful in mitigating oil spill impacts by informing predictions of where the oil will disperse and how quickly. Predictions of wave state are also useful in search and rescue operations should a crew member of a ship or oil platform fall overboard.
This has been On the Ocean, a program made possible by the Department of Oceanography and a production of KAMU-FM on the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station. For more information and links please go to ocean.tamu.edu and click “On the Ocean.”
Contributor: Dr. Henry Potter
Script Author: James M. Fiorendino