Field Measurements of Rogue Water Waves

Abstract This paper concerns the collation, quality control, and analysis of single-point field measurements from fixed sensors mounted on offshore platforms. In total, the quality-controlled database contains 122 million individual waves, of which 3649 are rogue waves. Geographically, the majority of the field measurements were recorded in the North Sea, with supplementary data from the Gulf of Mexico, the South China Sea, and the North West shelf of Australia. The significant wave height ranged from 0.12 to 15.4 m, the peak period ranged from 1 to 24.7 s, the maximum crest height was 18.5 m, and the maximum recorded wave height was 25.5 m. This paper will describe the offshore installations, instrumentation, and the strict quality control procedure employed to ensure a reliable dataset. An examination of sea state parameters, environmental conditions, and local characteristics is performed to gain an insight into the behavior of rogue waves. Evidence is provided to demonstrate that rogue waves are not governed by sea state parameters. Rather, the results are consistent with rogue waves being merely extraordinary and rare events of the normal population caused by dispersive focusing.