A slight change in the wind can be enough to kickstart a freak wave the height of a ten-storey tower block, researchers have concluded.

Sailors’ tales of monstrous waves up to 30 metres high, appearing from nowhere and big enough to sink the biggest ships, have endured for centuries but have only recently won scientific backing.

Three years ago satellite images pin-pointed by the European Space Agency provided solid evidence of the existence of rogue waves but the cause remained a mystery.

Researchers have now discovered that freak waves can occur not only in water but also in light, which is ruled by similar mathematical laws.

By “tickling” waves in their most sensitive spots, a small change in conditions can create a monster out of all proportion to the original disturbance.

By aiming pulses of noise at lightwaves in their infancy, researchers were able create disturbances that resulted in rogue waves developing.

Usually the disturbances would have little effect but would occasionally result in one or more waves growing 30-40 times bigger than average.

Because the behaviour of light and water waves were so similar, it was probable that similarly small influences were responsible for the types of waves that could sink ships, said Daniel Solli, who led a study for the University of California, Los Angeles, that has been reported in Nature.

Whereas noise was used in laboratory conditions to “seed” freak lightwaves, in the world’s oceans the noise would be replaced by factors such as a change in wind direction.

Mr Solli said: “The optical freak waves we have observed are seeded by noise. In this case, noise can be described as a small disturbance in the starting lightwaves, or in other words, a few extra photons out of place here and there, so to speak. As it turns out, the starting waves, which are smooth, are very sensitive to this noise. If the noise happens to contain a particular frequency component at the right instant in time, then an intense, steep wave develops.

“Essentially noise with the right characteristics tickles the initial wave in its most sensitive spot, and this leads to the development of an optical rogue wave. Since the mathematics that describe ocean waves in the deep sea are very similar, we believe these findings may also offer clues to the monstrous oceanic freak waves that have terrified seafarers for centuries.”

Little more than a decade ago, freak waves were regarded by science as nothing more than exaggeration by sailors, but in 1995 measurements taken as the Draupner oil platform in the North Sea was hit by a wave showed that there was real substance to the tales.

Mr Solli added: “For centuries, seafarers have told tales of giant waves that can appear without warning on the high seas. These mountainous waves were said to be capable of destroying a vessel or swallowing it beneath the surface, and then disappearing without the slightest trace.”

More than 200 cargo ships at least 200 metres long have disappeared at sea in the past 20 years and rogue waves are thought to have been responsible for at least some of the losses. Peter Newton, the chief officer of a container ship that in 1989 survived being struck by a 25-metre wave in the Great Australian Bight, recalled in 2004: “That wave still gives me nightmares. I can still see it coming. It came out of nowhere; we could see it from two miles away. There was nothing we could do about it.”

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