When an ocean wave falls, the ground shakes. Now, those wobbles are getting bigger.
Stormier seas and larger ocean swell in recent decades are pounding Earth’s seafloor with more force, sending larger ripples through Earth’s crust — almost like a tiny, tiny, tiny earthquake. The biggest wave energy increases, as measured with a seismometer, appear in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to [recent research](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42673-w).
The heightened force tracks with rising global temperatures, which can supercharge storms and make them bigger and more intense. These storms, compounded with rising sea levels, further erode land and threaten communities living on the coast.
“As the waves get bigger, they push and pull harder on the floor of the ocean,” said Rick Aster, seismologist and lead author of the study.
Wave energy across the world has increased 0.27 percent per year, on average, since the 1980s, the research found. It has been worse in recent years, increasing by 0.35 percent each year since 2000. A few tenths of a percent per year adds up over the decades, Aster said, amounting to about an 8 percent increase over 30 years.
Oceans are the background buzz of Earth. Falling waves are constantly hitting the seafloor, sending small pulses to even the deep interiors of continents. Take out human activity, glacier quakes, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, nuclear and other explosions, and you’re left with ocean vibes.
Seismometers, which measure the movement of the ground typically from earthquakes, can pick up the seismic waves from the thrashing ocean. Analyzing data from more than 50 stations worldwide, the team observed these high-seas vibrations traveling across long distances as a steady hum. Imagine waves crashing onto Earth’s crust like a finger plucking a guitar string, but creating waves on a much larger scale.
The length of a wave is “tens of kilometers, and they actually propagate in the crust of the earth, so they’re really big beasts,” said Aster, head of the Geosciences Department at Colorado State University. “In the absence of earthquakes or other large transient events, it’s the dominant seismic signal on our planet.”
You wouldn’t feel the ground shaking because the motion is on the scale of microns. You also wouldn’t be able to listen to any rumbles because they occur on scales way below our hearing. But we recognize these large sets of waves — the kind that excite surfers from California or Hawaii. They’re created from big storms that have high winds over long distances, Aster said.
And these gnarly waves are more common than you may think, constantly hitting Earth’s seafloor because “somewhere in the world, there’s a giant storm generating these waves,” he said.
The most surprising aspect of the study, Aster said, was that the wave energy increase was “happening almost everywhere on the planet.” Around 80 percent of stations showed highly significant and progressive increases in energy over the decades — a fact that would “never occur by chance.”
“Global warming puts increased energy in the atmosphere, resulting in stronger storms with intensified winds that generate increased wave heights,” said oceanographer Peter Bromirski, who was not involved in the study. For example, more water is evaporated into a warmer atmosphere and becomes fuel for storms.
More and more folks are flocking to the coasts, more and more investments in property and infrastructure, while sea level rises and now this. Our ports are at sea level. The Gulf Coast petrochemical/chemical complex is at sea level. Our dirtiest industrial sites are gonna be spreading sea-borne contaminants to compliment all the airborne poisons, oh joy!
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When an ocean wave falls, the ground shakes. Now, those wobbles are getting bigger.
Stormier seas and larger ocean swell in recent decades are pounding Earth’s seafloor with more force, sending larger ripples through Earth’s crust — almost like a tiny, tiny, tiny earthquake. The biggest wave energy increases, as measured with a seismometer, appear in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to [recent research](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42673-w).
The heightened force tracks with rising global temperatures, which can supercharge storms and make them bigger and more intense. These storms, compounded with rising sea levels, further erode land and threaten communities living on the coast.
“As the waves get bigger, they push and pull harder on the floor of the ocean,” said Rick Aster, seismologist and lead author of the study.
Wave energy across the world has increased 0.27 percent per year, on average, since the 1980s, the research found. It has been worse in recent years, increasing by 0.35 percent each year since 2000. A few tenths of a percent per year adds up over the decades, Aster said, amounting to about an 8 percent increase over 30 years.
Oceans are the background buzz of Earth. Falling waves are constantly hitting the seafloor, sending small pulses to even the deep interiors of continents. Take out human activity, glacier quakes, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, meteor strikes, nuclear and other explosions, and you’re left with ocean vibes.
Seismometers, which measure the movement of the ground typically from earthquakes, can pick up the seismic waves from the thrashing ocean. Analyzing data from more than 50 stations worldwide, the team observed these high-seas vibrations traveling across long distances as a steady hum. Imagine waves crashing onto Earth’s crust like a finger plucking a guitar string, but creating waves on a much larger scale.
The length of a wave is “tens of kilometers, and they actually propagate in the crust of the earth, so they’re really big beasts,” said Aster, head of the Geosciences Department at Colorado State University. “In the absence of earthquakes or other large transient events, it’s the dominant seismic signal on our planet.”
You wouldn’t feel the ground shaking because the motion is on the scale of microns. You also wouldn’t be able to listen to any rumbles because they occur on scales way below our hearing. But we recognize these large sets of waves — the kind that excite surfers from California or Hawaii. They’re created from big storms that have high winds over long distances, Aster said.
And these gnarly waves are more common than you may think, constantly hitting Earth’s seafloor because “somewhere in the world, there’s a giant storm generating these waves,” he said.
The most surprising aspect of the study, Aster said, was that the wave energy increase was “happening almost everywhere on the planet.” Around 80 percent of stations showed highly significant and progressive increases in energy over the decades — a fact that would “never occur by chance.”
“Global warming puts increased energy in the atmosphere, resulting in stronger storms with intensified winds that generate increased wave heights,” said oceanographer Peter Bromirski, who was not involved in the study. For example, more water is evaporated into a warmer atmosphere and becomes fuel for storms.
**Read more, free with email registration:** [**https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/16/bigger-ocean-waves-earth/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com**](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/16/bigger-ocean-waves-earth/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)
oh really? 😏 wheres the video 😈😈😈
More and more folks are flocking to the coasts, more and more investments in property and infrastructure, while sea level rises and now this. Our ports are at sea level. The Gulf Coast petrochemical/chemical complex is at sea level. Our dirtiest industrial sites are gonna be spreading sea-borne contaminants to compliment all the airborne poisons, oh joy!