Computer Models Help NOAA Predict Gulf Spill Impact, Location

The events in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the Deepwater Horizon platform fire, and the subsequent leak which continues at a pace of 200,000 gallons per day of crude oil entering gulf waters at a depth of one mile below the surface, are truly tough to watch unfold. The full scope of the environmental impacts are yet to be revealed but are widely expected to be grim and enduring.

If silver linings are to be found, they exist in those individuals and organizations who are mobilizing effort and resources to target the clean up and to support emergency wildlife response.

And the silver linings also exist in the incredibly complex task of predicting just how much oil will make it to shore, where and when. As Live Science reports, NOAA scientists are applying leading edge computer modeling technologies to the astonishingly complex problem of how the leaked oil is likely to behave, a fluid released into a different fluid, through the vagaries of changing winds, currents, weather and temperatures.

It's an exceedingly challenging set of tasks. But to the extent that NOAA's marine scientists can transform the spill's randomness and uncertainty into a more useful and accurate set of expectations regarding severity and location of impacts, we will be better prepared to target response efforts. And we may have the opportunity to recover more oil before it makes its way to the shore should we have a good predictive model indicating where the still-leaking oil is most likely to go.

As Live Science indicates, NOAA's current technique for the fate and transport of the oil arises through a partnership with Poojitha Yapa, Professor of Civil And Environmental Engineering at Clarkson University. Yapa has devised a computer model he has named the Comprehensive Deepwater Oil and Gas Blowout Model, or CDOG for short. The model is designed to explain the most probable behavior of oil released in deep water situations such as the current event in the Gulf of Mexico

As the CDOG website explains:

"CDOG simulates the behavior of oil and gas accidentally released from deep water. This is a three-dimensional model. In deep water, the ultra-high pressure and cold temperature causes phase changes in gasses. These effects combined with deep water currents in some regions presents extraordinary challenges to modeling jets/plumes from deep water oil and gas blowouts ... CDOG has already been successfully used for simulations up to 3000 m (approx 10,000 ft). But it can do simulations from even deeper depths."

With the leak still ongoing, firm predictions about what to expect in terms of timing and location of oil reaching shoreline are tenuous, but according to Live Science, what has been documented so far regarding both locations and concentration of oil in gulf waters are matched to CDOG model predictions for where the oil leaked from the bottom of the Gulf are most likely to appear on the surface.

Bolstering the results provided by CDOG, NOAA is applying meteorological data including wind speed and direction to refine where the oil is most likely to travel, and at what speed, once it reaches the water's surface. As a result, NOAA is able to derive a reasonably accurate 72-hour portrait of the leaked oil transport scenario.

Image by NOAA via Wikimedia Commons.