Something strange is happening to the average height of the waves hitting the Pacific northwest’s foggy coastline – they’re growing by 7cm a year. According to Oregon State based researchers, the increase in average wave heights could do more damage than the sea level rise.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a comparison between wave height and sea level,” said Sultan Hameed, an atmospheric scientist at Stony Brook University, who organized the American Geophysical Union annual meeting session at which Ruggiero presented. “That was excellent analysis.”
Unlike sea level, the current data suggests that wave heights are not increasing uniformly across the globe. However, many regions lack the right data to do proper analysis. Bigger wave heights off the coast of Oregon were first discovered just a few years ago by other OSU scientists. They had the advantage of working with the unique dataset created by the Pacific coast’s longest-floating buoy; it’s been gathering data on wave heights for over 30 years.
