By Rafi Letzter; Planet Earth The Oc
April 26, 2019
The Verrazano Bridge in Brooklyn as Hurricane Sandy approached on Oct. 29, 2012.(Image: © Carlos Ayala, Flickr)
Ocean waves all over the world are growing bigger, driven by an increase in extreme winds. That's the upshot of a new study that used 33 years of satellite data to monitor changes in the ocean. The researchers, a pair of scientists from the University of Melbourne in Australia, have built the largest-ever database of wind and wave data, and found that both increased significantly between 1985 and 2018. The most extreme changes involved the fastest winds and highest waves: The top 10% of winds increased in speed by 4.9 feet per second (1.5 meters per second), and the top 10% of waves increased in height by a foot (30 centimeters) over the same period. That amounts to an 8% increase in the speed of extreme winds, and a 5% increase in the height of extreme waves. The findings were published Thursday (April 25) in the journal Science.
Read more: https://www.livescience.com/65343-monster-ocean-waves-get-bigger.html
Comments