This paper provides an approach by which the scour depth below pipelines in shoaling conditions beneath non-breaking and breaking random waves can be derived. Here the scour depth formula in shoaling conditions for regular non-breaking and breaking waves with normal incidence to the pipeline presented by Cevik and Yuksel [Cevik, E. and Yuksel, Y., (1999). Scour under submarine pipelines in waves in shoaling conditions. ASCE J. Waterw., Port, Coast. Ocean Eng., 125 (1), 9-19.] combined with the wave height distribution including shoaling and breaking waves presented by Mendez et al. [Mendez, F.J., Losada, I.J. and Medina, R., (2004). Transformation model of wave height distribution on planar beaches. Coast. Eng. 50 (3), 97-115.] are used. Moreover, the approach is based on describing the wave motion as a stationary Gaussian narrow-band random process. An example of calculation is also presented. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.