Oil Spill Disasters

A New Tool for Tracking Oil Spills

Science |

In Brief...

Using this year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a real-time experiment, scientists have developed a new model that can predict the movement of contaminants with greater accuracy than ever before. When fluid dynamicist Igor Mezic of the University of California, Santa Barbara, watched TV reports in late April showing 10,000 or more barrels of crude oil a day spilling into the gulf, he quickly assembled a research team. "That meant some of the oil could move very rapidly toward the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, while other parts of the spill would stay relatively far out to sea," says Mezic, whose team reports its findings online today in Science. Using the new formulas, the team was able to predict accurately, several days in advance, that the oil would first reach the shores of Plaquemines Parish and Grand Isle, Louisiana, and Pensacola, Florida, in late May, and then Panama City Beach, Florida, in early June. Mezic says that, based on the revelations of the model, his team members stayed in telephone contact with the spill cleanup team, telling them, days in advance, where the oil was heading and where they could best deploy their people and resources..

Read the entire article at Science...

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