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This simulation shows an 800-foot-tall wave breaking next to a skyscraper for scale. A study done in 2012 by researchers at the University of Washington (UW) recorded for the first time, an enormous wave breaking miles below the surface in a key bottleneck for global ocean circulation. In the deep ocean, huge, skyscraper-tall waves can form between layers of water of different densities.
These waves transport heat, energy, carbon and nutrients around the globe, and where and how they break is important for the planet's climate. Dense water in Antarctica sinks to the deep Pacific, where it eventually surges through a 25-mile gap in the sub-marine landscape northeast of Samoa." Basically the entire South Pacific flow is blocked by this huge sub-marine ridge," said Matthew Alford, an oceanographer at UW. "The amount of water that's trying to get northward through this gap is just tremendous--6 million cubic meters of water per second, or about 35 Amazon Rivers."Image credit: Tom Peacock, MIT/Wide Eye Productions
