{"id":813485,"date":"2026-07-21T02:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T02:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813485\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T02:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T02:54:12","slug":"making-waves-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/813485\/","title":{"rendered":"MAKING WAVES | Particle"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research<\/a> from the University of Melbourne has deepened our understanding of where waves originate, how they decay and just how far they can travel across oceans.<\/p>\n

The work improves the reliability and quality of wave forecasts used by the Bureau of Meteorology<\/a> as well as industries such as shipping and urban design.<\/p>\n

The innovative method tracked ocean swell across the Pacific using more than 300 GPS-enabled buoys. It heralds a shift towards data-driven models, which could revolutionise the way waves and weather are predicted.<\/p>\n

WAVING FROM A DISTANCE<\/p>\n

Professor Ian Young<\/a> is an expert in ocean physics and wind-generated waves and the lead author of the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He says most waves originate near the polar regions, particularly near Antarctica where intense ocean storms can rotate all the way around the Earth without hitting land.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they\u2019re generated, those waves propagate off across the oceans,\u201d says Ian.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like if you throw a pebble in a pond, then the waves radiate away from that pebble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waves that have propagated from where they originated are called swell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of these waves can travel across oceans for 17 days, reaching shores up to 12,000 kilometres away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FEELING SWELL<\/p>\n

Understanding how waves travel can help us plan for future climate change and sea-level rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waves are getting larger<\/a> as a result of more intense and frequent storms, especially in the Southern Ocean. This can impact coastal erosion and put coastal infrastructure<\/a> at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ocean already plays an important role in mitigating climate change because carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is sequestered in the deep ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve got waves breaking on the surface of the ocean, they\u2019re much more efficient at actually taking carbon dioxide and pushing it down into the ocean,\u201d says Ian.<\/p>\n

Better prediction models can help us understand the complex ways the ocean influences and is shaped by our changing climate.<\/p>\n

OH BUOY<\/p>\n

While weather prediction has improved drastically<\/a> over the past 15 years, Ian says swell propagation models are lagging.<\/p>\n

Previously, physicists have used data from satellites taking aerial images<\/a> of the ocean as they pass overhead.<\/p>\n

The new study used data from an array of low-cost GPS-enabled buoys<\/a> floating freely in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

The buoys report their position in three-dimensional space and the direction they\u2019re travelling in. This data allowed the team to visualise how waves were moving across the ocean.<\/p>\n

Ian says the buoys have opened up new possibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve ever been able to get that sort of data and to understand some of these really quite interesting elements of wave physics,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

WAVE HELLO TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE<\/p>\n

These floating buoys are contributing to rapid change in the field of wave prediction.<\/p>\n

\u201cOcean science is moving from a time when we complained that we didn\u2019t have enough data to a period where we\u2019re swamped with the data,\u201d says Ian.<\/p>\n

Weather predictions are currently made based on complex physics modelling, but researchers are looking to artificial intelligence to turn the influx of information into data-driven models.<\/p>\n

Ian is optimistic about what can be achieved in an area of research he describes as \u201cdifficult\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The AI models] take only a fraction of the time to run \u2026 and produce very, very good results,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While AI is not as good as traditional models yet<\/a>, we can expect big changes over the next few years in the way that waves are predicted.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New research from the University of Melbourne has deepened our understanding of where waves originate, how they decay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,128],"class_list":["post-813485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}