MOSCOW, July 30 (RIA Novosti) - Huge waves, exceeding 16 feet during a storm, have been registered for the first time in the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea located off the coast of Alaska, according to a recently published study. Researchers Jim Thomson from the University of Washington, Seattle, and W. Erick Rogers from the Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, observed huge waves during a storm in 2012, with the highest swell reaching 29 feet.
The observations reported in the paper “are the only known wave measurements in the central Beaufort Sea” that was covered with ice all year around not so long ago thus leaving no room for wave generation.
Ice cover in the region once retreated no more than 100 miles during summer. However, in 2012, ice in the Beaufort Sea retreated more than 1,000 miles providing enough open water areas to generate large waves. Swells, waves that carry more energy, reached their maximum in September when seasonal ice retreat was at its peak.
Although ice cover in the Arctic is still significant, it is reducing at a growing pace. That increases the distance, or fetch, that winds travel to generate waves resulting in larger waves. Researchers added that swell would be more common based on their predictions of reduced seasonal sea ice cover in the Arctic.
Huge waves, in their turn, will contribute to ice breaking up which will accelerate ice retreat, researchers pointed out in the paper, titled “Swell and sea in the emerging Arctic Ocean,” that was published in the Geophysical Researchers Letters. They also stated that ice-free summers in the Arctic could be possible because increased wave activity is the required “feedback mechanism” which would drive that process.
