What are rogue waves and what causes them?

Once dismissed as mythology, the 'giant colossi' are now taken very seriously

Illustrative collage of Hokusai's "The Great Wave of Kanagawa", trimmed and scaled up. The boats from the original have been replaced with one tiny boat, about to be swallowed by the wave.
(Image credit: Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images)

For centuries, seafaring folks' reports of terrifyingly huge waves that appeared out of nowhere were dismissed as fantasy by those on dry land.   

Now, the existence of these "real sea monsters" that have "swallowed up dozens of ships" is widely accepted, said Metro, and experts are working to understand what causes them and whether climate change is making them more common. 

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  Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.