Freak waves spotted from space (2004)

I always find it amusing how little we know about most of our planet. Then I get sad at the vast amount of scientists losing their jobs or having to work for large-company-for-profit since they can't get enough funding to research what they want.<p>Maybe we need to start getting scientists to use Kickstarter? "For $400,000 I can make some serious headway into rogue wave research and will publish all of my data in real time!" I'd toss a couple hundred at projects like this.<p>On a side note we need a website and very simple API for scientists to publish research in real time... with a not-horrible interface like most science websites have.

Results of the MAXWAVE Project<p>W. Rosenthal<p>Institute of Coastal Research, Geesthacht, Germany<p><a href="http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...</a>

On an average two large ships sink every week? Really? That's way too high than what I had expected. Can anyone cite a source for this info?

This article is from 2004. For more information on the project as well as the ugliest site you could possibly imagine, visit <a href="http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/" rel="nofollow">http://coast.gkss.de/projects/maxwave/</a><p>Edit: Apparently parts of their server have sunk as well.

Statistics about ship losses in this article are utterly wrong. The Wikipedia article below explicitly calls out the press release this article appears to be based upon.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave#Loss_estimates" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave#Loss_estimates</a>

Summary of ocean surface topography measurement using satellite altimetry:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_topography" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_surface_topography</a>

Out of curiosity, I went looking to see if this data has translated into thinking about ship design:<p><a href="http://66.180.169.221/pdf/2007symp09.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://66.180.169.221/pdf/2007symp09.pdf</a><p><a href="http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/2005pdfs/Rosenthal.p...</a><p><a href="http://www.ifremer.fr/web-com/molagnon/bv/Faulkner_w.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ifremer.fr/web-com/molagnon/bv/Faulkner_w.pdf</a>

Article about the follow-up study from the German Space Agency, including some kind of map.<p><a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/18245/" rel="nofollow">http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/18245/</a>

Freak waves and 2004 - thought it was about the 2004 tsunami.