The New Year Wave: Spatial Evolution of an Extreme Sea State

In the past years the existence of freak waves has been affirmed by observations, registrations, and severe accidents. Many publications investigated the occurrence of extreme waves, their characteristics and their impact on offshore structures, but their formation process is still under discussion. One of the famous real world registrations is the so called “New Year wave,” recorded in the North Sea at the Draupner jacket platform on January 1st, 1995. Since there is only a single point registration available, it is not possible to draw conclusions on the spatial development in front of and behind the point of registration, which is indispensable for a complete understanding of this phenomenon. This paper presents the spatial development of the New Year wave generated in a model basin. To transfer the recorded New Year wave into the wave tank, an optimization approach for the experimental generation of wave sequences with predefined characteristics is applied. The extreme sea state obtained with this method is measured at different locations in the tank, in a range from 2163 m (full scale) ahead of to 1470 m behind the target position—520 registrations altogether. The focus lies on the detailed description of a possible evolution of the New Year wave over a large area and time interval. It is observed that the extreme wave at the target position develops mainly from a wave group of three smaller waves. The group velocity, wave propagation, and the energy flux of this wave group are analyzed, in particular.