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Gulf Oil Spill Likely to Hit U.S. Atlantic Coast This Summer
BOULDER, Colorado - Oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico is likely to extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and into the open ocean as early as this summer, according to a detailed computer modeling study released today by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
An image from the NCAR computer model of the flow of Deepwater Horizon oil. (Image courtesy NCAR)
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation,
NCAR's sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and
elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication.
"I've had a lot of people ask me, 'Will the oil reach Florida?'" says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. "Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood."
The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico's fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks.It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east to the open ocean.
Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the upper ocean is not known. The flow in the model represents the best estimate of how ocean currents are likely to respond under typical wind conditions.
More model studies are underway that will indicate what might happen to the oil in the Atlantic Ocean.
"We have been asked if and when remnants of the spill could reach the European coastlines," says Martin Visbeck, a member of the research team from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Germany.
"Our assumption is that the enormous lateral mixing in the ocean together with the biological disintegration of the oil should reduce the pollution to levels below harmful concentrations," said Visbeck. "But we would like to have this backed up by numbers from some of the best ocean models."
To model the flow of oil, NCAR scientists are using the Parallel Ocean Program, the ocean component of the Community Climate System Model, a powerful software tool developed by scientists at NCAR in collaboration with the Department of Energy. They are conducting the simulations at supercomputers based at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The NCAR scientists simulated how a liquid released at the spill site would disperse and circulate, producing results that are not dependent on the total amount released.
The scientists tracked the rate of dispersal in the top 65 feet of the water and at four additional depths, with the lowest just above the sea bed.
"The modeling study is analogous to taking a dye and releasing it into water, then watching its pathway," Peacock says.
The dye tracer used in the model has no actual physical resemblance to true oil. Unlike oil, the dye has the same density as the surrounding water, does not coagulate or form slicks, and is not subject to chemical breakdown by bacteria or other forces.
Peacock and her colleagues stress that the simulations are not a forecast because it is impossible to accurately predict the precise location of the oil weeks or months from now.
Instead, the simulations provide possible scenarios for the oil dispersal. The timing and course of the oil slick will be affected by regional weather conditions and the ever-changing state of the Gulf's Loop Current, neither of which can be predicted more than a few days in advance.
The dilution of the oil relative to the source also will be impacted by bacterial degradation and other conditions, which are not included in the simulations.
What is possible, is to estimate a range of possible trajectories, based on the best understanding of how ocean currents transport material. The oil trajectory that actually occurs will depend on both on the short-term evolution of the Loop Current, which feeds into the Gulf Stream, and on the state of the overlying atmosphere.
Oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20 when the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire. Oil giant BP, which leased the rig to drill a test well 18,000 feet below the seafloor has not been able to stem the flow of oil from the broken wellhead.
Now, 45 days after the spill began, an estimated 540,000 to 1.25 million barrels of oil have entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, according to statements by the National Incident Command's Flow Rate Technical Group and an addition estimate given by Incident Commandert U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in a news briefing this week. Some of this oil has evaporated or been collected by skimmer boats or burned on the surface of the water.
The spill is located in a relatively stagnant area of the Gulf, and the oil so far has remained relatively confined near the Louisiana and Alabama coastlines, although there have been reports of small amounts in the Loop Current. Oil has come ashore in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
The model simulations show that a liquid released in the surface ocean at the spill site is likely to slowly spread as it is mixed by the ocean currents until it is entrained in the Loop Current. At that point, speeds pick up to about 40 miles per day, and when the liquid enters the Atlantic's Gulf Stream it can travel at speeds up to about 100 miles per day, or 3,000 miles per month.
The six model simulations released today all have different Loop Current characteristics, and all provide slightly different scenarios of how the oil might be dispersed. The simulations all bring the oil to south Florida and then up the East Coast. However, the timing of the oil's movement differs depending on the configuration of the Loop Current.
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54 Comments so far
Show AllWhat we need is an honest invention platform, where anyone who contributes a good idea gets some of the reward, and where really good ideas get developed into products, often for the good of the inventors, and often for the permanent good of this country and of the world. For military work, DARPA already invents and develops new technologies under a socialist model (eek! Socialists! Oh wait, it's ok because it's military work)
Well, Paul K, Now you have me thinking this whole thing is part of a DARPA experiment!
Indeed.
Imagine if every town had at least one public resource center where people could come to work on their pet projects, either alone or as part of a team. The center provides the tools and the project members provide the materiel.
I can imagine small teams working on developing new kinds of vehicles, lighting, washing machines, superinsulation, Bucky Fuller's "ephemeraliser", environmental cleanup tools, all sorts of things. All of it on the public-domain model, for the sheer joy of creating something wonderful.
Community resources everywhere working on a common problem via Internet Blogs!
All communities need to build a commons area for community needs to be addressed. Think how low cost this would be to the community. No need to build another library when most information is found on the Internet. Fund areas at the local college free for the public to hang out and make sun-tea, surf and converse.
Have a local council to approve of ideas worthy for FUNDING! Keep it simple!
The other thing pouring into the Atlantic just outside of Florida and South Carolina in a few weeks, is record heat in the water already, created by weeks of the oil sheen on the water, which cut evaporation. We've never had a 40 million gallon oil spill before, so we don't know quite what this does to the environment, but worse hurricanes is my guess. For reference, consult NOAA for Reynolds Sea Surface Temperature maps, a standard tool used in hurricane forecasting.
If the sheen is gone and the Gulf Stream water is abnormally hot, expect another Hurricane Andrew to explode out of nowhere. Or worse, if the water temperature is considerably worse.
the oil, itself, is a fair bit warmer than the gulf water, no? like a heater in a pool...
I still haven't heard anyone discuss what might happen if the oil gets sucked up into the air by a hurricane. Wouldn't that cause toxic rain inland?
Hard to say, but, consider the addition of lightning to the mix...
Could be another disaster movie.
Exactly! Why haven't we heard this issue discussed? Too scary. The sky would be falling...
I've seen this discussed in other fora. Mostly they conclude that a hurricane would not pose a huge disaster but would "disperse" the oil. But, they never tell us "disperesed to where". At any rate, I fear we are going to find out just exactly what a hurricane will do to this massive spill.
It is supposed to read Leak, not Spill ! Get these titles right please. There is a huge difference here !
I agree an oil "spill" it is not. However, "leak" is much too weak a word to describe what is happening. Oil gusher, oil blowout or oil volcano is more like it.
RRH, thanks for the tip. Gusher would certainly wake more people up than the word "leak".
How about human greed-and-ignorance-negligence-caused raw crude oil-mixed-with-toxic-chemical-dispersant mega-eco-catastrophe to 1/6 or more of the Planet?
Humor is very important when facing a deadly threat...alone. And I do believe we all feel alone with this leak, or spill, or gush, do we not? The sky IS falling, and our government has had its chance, so now what?
We soldier on, as we always have, and do not believe the lies, but still hope for a solution, a miracle, like in the movies miracle.
Perhaps it will happen, before the end of December, or perhaps we have killed ourselves, finally.
In which case, I'd rather go laughing, so bring on the gallows humor before we need to run for cover from the oily rain, or one of the other "solutions", yes.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
I think once the wind whips the surface it will bust up the sheeting on the surface, most oil will mix with water and the rest with the mist carried in the air.
Water Vapor will also be released.
I remember an unusual hurricane hitting the Connecticut coast. The wind circulation had become separated from the cloud deck and so the hurricane had no rain whatsoever. However, the hurricane picked up a great deal of salt water spray offshore and brought it as much as 5 miles inland. The salt spray killed off the leaves on the trees. Trees had to re-leaf in September.
However, unless the Gulf has a rare dry hurricane, I think any oily mist will be perpetually washed out of the atmosphere and back onto the sea surface by intense rainfall.
The real danger is a tidal surge washing oil inland.
well, they've cut the riser off the BOP. Now she's flowing at full blast.
[http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream3&hpt=T2
no backpressure now from the kinked riser so the flowrate as likely increased substantially.
man, what a fukin mess.
A major problem of the cleanup is where to store the crude/water or crude/soil mixes temporarily.
I understand that today's typical crude oil storage tanks can hold close to one million barrels of fluid.
The rate of flow from the oil leak has been estimated from a low of 15,000 to 100,000 barrels per day. Let me assume an upper limit of 30,000 barrels per day.
A typical crude oil storage tank can hold approximately one month of leaked crude. To be on the safe side (there is water too), only two large and empty storage tanks need/must be requisitioned by the federal government from the petroleum industry for every month of unimpeded leak. There are plenty of large storage tanks available along the Gulf coast.
Is it too far fetched to compare the Gulf disaster to war time?
If we are "at war" with the oil leak then the federal government must also requisition supertankers in U.S. ports to begin the sucking up of oil and water and its transfer to the requisitioned storage tanks for later separation of oil and water.
For the oil/soil mixtures, new facilities must be built immediately along the Gulf coast (A new "Manhattan Project"; folks, we are at war with the oil leak)to wash the soils with solvents. More storage tanks are needed for the extracts.
Yes, this is a huge task/enterprise but so was the building of the nuclear bombs and this is for peace! Peace of mind.
What is our government waiting for? Is it a government or what? Do we have a government?
Thank you! SECONDED!
Killing It to Save the Rest of the Planet:
If there is a rainbow at the end of this hideous event, if (it) spreads to the entire east coast, it may wake people the fuck up. Not only to the magnitude of what a clean environment means to us, but the sheer corruption, criminality and ineptitude of Washington and Wall Street. Perhaps we can at least save the rest of our world.
May they all that are responsible for this event burn in hell. (Hel-loooo faux liberals, progressives and democratic Washington / MS Eco group hacks. Gee, hope I didn't leave anyone out! :)
Up here in Maine we like to look at the bright side ah thangs. Like afta dis summa we won't be sayin rained like cats an dogs last nite. We be sayin sure did rain like a BP leak las night. In fact, nobody spends to much time at them stand up urinals at the highway rest stop cuz if you gush to long they think you is a BP employee and had ain't to good in a state where alot dem folks got pitch forks.
It's hard to look on the bright side of da run on dem blue tarps at tha hardware stow thou. Just ain't none left cuz everyone figyas cum haricane season they be coverin the back 40 with dem tarps and maybe have nuff to finially change the oil in the old tracta.
I'm winken at ya', Abe. Send it in to "Saturday Night Live."
Humor always is a womderful temporary relief ... Thanks.
peace, cm
Yeah, well...I come from many generations of Mainers, like pre-Revolution, and that's the worst fucking attempt at Yankee dialect I've ever seen. Tom Bosley is laughing at your sorry ass.
And there is no "hurricane season" in Maine. Almost every single one goes out to sea at Cape Cod.
Christ,
It's only been 40 days. What's this blob going to look like in another two or six months if they can't thread the needle with the relief wells? This was a Methane blow out right? Maybe it fractured the sea floor and plugging that little riser is just another Tony Hayward whopper and stalling technique.
He probably knows none of this robot crap is going to work....
From wiki:
On May 19, scientists monitoring the spill with the European Space Agency Envisat radar satellite stated that oil reached the Loop Current, which flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, and may reach Florida within 6 days. The scientists warn that because the Loop Current is a very intense, deep ocean current, its turbulent waters will accelerate the mixing of the oil and water in the coming days. "This might remove the oil film on the surface and prevent us from tracking it with satellites, but the pollution is likely to affect the coral reef marine ecosystem".[108] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged, on May 19, that "a small portion of the oil slick has reached the Loop Current in the form of light to very light sheens."[109]
On May 29, President Obama called the inability to stop the flow "as enraging as it is heartbreaking." Larry Crowder, marine biologist at Duke University, predicted the spill could reach 100 million gallons before a permanent solution is found, and with that much oil, damage to the Florida coast and the East Coast appeared more likely. James H. Cowan, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University, said a hurricane could result in oil reaching farther inland, even affecting rice and sugar cane crops. A hurricane could also delay actions that would lead to a permanent solution, and it could spread the oil further or deeper in the ocean.[110] UNQUOTE
So you can cross off the following food sources:
Gulf Shrimp and Seafood
Atlantic Fish and Seafood
and if we have an "Oilcane" rice and sugar become unsafe as well, because CEO's won't pull it off the shelves until people start getting sick, since they own the FDA.....
Thanks to globalization, I'm not even safe way over here on the far side of the world, because if history is any guide, these CEO's will try dumping their soiled foods off on the third world like they always do.
Your Coffee got an oil sheen on it? No more sugar for you....
You can thank Obomber since he did zero, except hide out in a coast guard station pretending to be on top of it. I've never seen such an irresponsible president in my life. At least Bush had Cheney handle the disasters while he was reading "My Pet Goat" (Never mind that that was like giving the Devil your soul...)
What's Joe Biden doing? Nothing? Maybe he's planning to be late for dinner at the BP bonus dinner like he did with the Israelis. Boy, that'll show em!
TJ
I have yet to read of anyone's concern that if the oil travels around the tip of the Florida peninsula, it could create a very serious problem for Cuba who lies only 90 miles to the south of the Florida keys. The spread of oil along the coastline of Cuba could create a crisis far worse than the infamous missile crisis of the last century. We do not own the Gulf of Mexico. It doesn't bear our name. It is shared with other nations. Who speaks for them?
Nobody cares. They're commies, right? Will they still send fashionable Che shirts? Can we still soothe ourselves with the senseless embargo? Will the oil hit the secret rights-free US prision in Gitmo? Should we try to keep the oil from them so they can't run their '58 Chevys on it? Damnn commies have health care, to hell with them. Organic Farms, damn them.
Well, if Monsanto can sue organic farmers when GM traits start polluting their crops, maybe we could sue Cuba for taking our oil.
Saw a scientist from the University of New Hampshire talking about ocean circulation patterns on PBS news tonight. What struck me was how lightly she explained the whole thing. The oil would break up into tiny globs. Some would evaporate. Some would be transformed into compounds presumably not so dangerous. The oil would be diluted. And so on. As a biologist, I felt the enormous divide between life science and physical science, a gulf that separates my thinking from hers. Is she aware of biomagnification--the concept that organisms concentrate certain chemicals (especially fat soluble ones like oils) in their bodies and that those become even more concentrated as you move up the food chain? What might be the impact of that kind of thing on animals at the top of the food chain? No one knows. But it certainly is not something to blow off. Nature will reach a new balance--I am certain of that. But what kind of balance will it be? One with fewer species, perhaps one dominated by a few kinds of algae and not many "higher" animals at all. Interesting experiment we are carrying out. Doubt if I'll live long enough to get the results.
consciousness would require stopping...there is no logical rationalization...
she is sleep-speaking...she appears to be thinking, but her thinking stops short...
peace...
What is the impact of evaporating oil on the atmosphere? Are we going to get oil rains? Flammable air? What?
I would also like to know.
I wouldn't worry about combustion too much. What most people don't know is that even gasoline in liquid form is not very flammable; it's the vapor that explodes. I had a mechanic neighbor who would take a cup of gas and put his cigarette out in it right in front of you for shock effect. When you asked if he was trying to get us killed, he would explain, correctly, that the tip of the cigarette was just not hot enough to ignite liquid gasoline.
Of course what he didn't explain, which I knew from science class, was that an open flame IS hot enough to catch some vapor off his cup and explode....(like a match or a lighter).
Crude is even harder to burn, so I don't think "flammable air" is a big concern. The worry is little drops falling out everywhere, polluting everybody's cell machinery as drosera's very interesting post outlined. Oil rains are what I fear. Thunderstorms are just big vertical vacuum cleaners which pull junk air/humidity off the surface, tumble it around until it supercools and later puke it out as rain (or other precip) in their mature stage. But the sealife of the gulf is a goner at this point. I just hope that it doesn't kill off the Atlantic as well.
In about a hundred years, this goop will sink down into the sand and life can make another go of it. But with 4,000 additional wells out there in the gulf, forget it. There WILL be another blow out.
This is what happens when you drill. The only good news is that this mess just saved the California coastline. The Terminator (Arnold) already knows we won't stand for off-shore drilling after this,
TJ
>>There WILL be another blow out.<<
I read one report and have heard nothing since, but this one report stated that BP is currently drilling in MUCH deeper water about 150 miles south of LA, and that that operation is in some kind of trouble, the nature of which was unspecified. I'll see if I can find something on it and update this posting.
EKATON,
Thanks for the heads up,
Please tell us the name of the rig and the coordinates (GPS) if you can. I can check google earth and see if there's more info on it. By the way, I also ran across a post claiming that Haliburton had a similar casing blow-out last year in Indonesia. I wish I had recorded the event. Now I lost it. Dang. Alas, it's hard to stay organized when your old like me.
TJ
Even when filtered, reality is not a reasonable beast,
Lets put the spotlight on what is going wrong,
Public opinion is not happy after a failure feast.
Obama has gone very quiet with his change song.
The peace man has helped drill the ocean oil spills.
The peace man pays for weapons for the paranoid nuclear Israel.
The peace man wars with drone bombers, for the most random civilian kills,
and scalates military follies, even as they continue towards fail.
Doing things with no rights to exist in the first place.
Against the natural order, with the most impossible entropy.
Invest in the unmaintainable, with great cost, and loss of face.
Goals so easily said, by the simple minded read. All will be denied eventually by reality.
Seek out wisdom to harmonize with the true reality,
where the rules of the physical world and society rules are hard.
Ignore the corporate money men who pay to play politicality,
whose narcissist aims are vested in a house of card.
We drill because of the great energy costs of our desires.
It is the desires that must be changed, not the world.
"It is the desires that must be changed, not the world."
You sure have that right, B3nign.
Seems to me we are going to be forced to do the inner work we have been avoiding for such a long time.
+++++
"I'd like to make a motion that we face Reality." - Bob Newhart Show
peace, cm
Yes, we must be the change we desire...
It is not governments that revolutionize society, precisely the opposite - governments and their agents exist to maintain a status quo. It is the pioneers and impassioned people that seek the new and better way, from which new governments emerge.
Oh well, "OBX" was ruined long ago when they opened nearly all the national seashore beaches to SUV's and covered the rest with mcmansions-on-stilts. In the peak season, you'd be safer strolling on the highway than strolling on the beach.
Obama - One Term President
The do-nothing President Obama is the same as the last disastrous President George W. Bush!!!
How's that "hopey-change thing working out for ya," now?
Bush and company blamed Clinton for the attacks of September 11, 2001..
Obama and company blame Bush for this latest oil spill.....
I blame both Bush and Obama for the terrorist attacks and the oil spill respectively.
Once you take the oath of office it's your job to undo those terrible policies of your predecessor(s) and ensure such things do not happen.
This oil spill happened under Obama and after he proudly said drilling was on and going to continue as it did before him.
Drill, Baby, Drill, Obama is now Spill, Baby, Spill, Barack Obama who has been a disaster as president.
From going after teachers to not holding Israel accountable to adopting the Bush administration narrative on Iran to the awful healthcare bill to the debt commission which will cut social security and to the continued bloated military budget and ongoing wars, Obama is a total failure!!!!!!
I don't expect the ObamaBots to ever become sober about the Obama "fraudster" but there is always "hope" that even the Obama bootlickers will "change."
And, this ain't no Joke, Jack!!!!!
You are the one here obsessed with Obama.
Any ninny can rant and complain, and fault can be found in everyone and everything.
Got something constructive to say then say it, and spare us the political hatred.
Thanks.
cosmobilly,
Just who the hell died and left you God?
Joker-Jack is correct on all counts. We need to throw this ex-CIA government con man out.
We can't sustain any more disasters like this.
Right now, over 100 rickety nuclear power plants are running decades past their service life at 120 percent rated power. That's like driving your car at 90mph thinking nothing will go wrong. If something does, it won't just be the Gulf lost for 20-100 years. It will be a whole state uninhabitable for 600 years, if Chernobyl is any guide.
Finding fault with Obama, and making him accountable for failing to accomplish his job of custodian of public safety is exactly what we need to be doing right now.
TJ
(Right now the Yankee plant is leaking deadly Tritium into the drinking water and surrounding rivers and nobody can get the sorry-excuse for a government to shut it down.)
If you all want to get really sick look at the live video feed right now. That thing is a gusher, not a spill. But then I suppose it doesn't matter how many innocent animals it kills the only thing that is noticed is when the oil finally reaches the precious east coast--land of the monied movers and shakers of this pathetic country...too sad for words.
I'm telling you all again folks,
The BOP went BOOM Friday night.
This is animation, it to show , yes, there is some oil
leaking (because with the gusher , they no they can't hide
leakege) but just this here.
There is no BOP sitting on top of the well head !!!!!
And Cuba gets screwed. Havana and many of its resorts are where the oil will come ashore.
I saw a CBC report that had Pensacola, Florida expecting the outer fringes of the oil slick to reach their shores tomorrow.
So much for a timeline of 'weeks'... and we will likely see oil along the Atlantic coast by mid-July.
I wonder how long it will be until a European trade embargo hits the US?
Hits the US? Well, then, it should include the UK. It's a British company after all. Probably it will be England that prosecutes BP if the oil comes there!
We are SO DOOMED.
Robert D. Meek, Jr.
Loris, South Carolina
Horry County
United States of America
(About 25 miles inland from the coast. Nearest "big city": Myrtle Beach. County seat of government: Conway. Horry County: the "H" is silent; largest county in landmass in South Carolina; very coastal up against ocean.; major industry - tourism.)
rm8471,
South Carolina was really something.
Back in the day of blissful ignorance, before global warming was a term known to me, I took my 43 foot motor yacht all the way down the inter-costal waterway with my wife. Bush had cut funding for dredging and bridge maintenace, so it was a bit tricky. But I couldn't believe the awesome open wetlands I traversed in South Carolina. It was marsh grass in all directions for hours.
I'm glad I got to see it before it was ruined.
TJ
Chicxulub Redux
The oil
it is spewing
gallon after gallon
ton after ton gushing
into those clear aqua blue regions
as I write this
week after week
every second
for the last month and maybe
a few more --
I have seen the end
of life
billowing red-brown
the thick of it and I am
beyond anger beyond
grief
having only these powerless
words
This must be stopped and
those responsible can never
pay enough -- these greed driven
mega-criminals this
monstrous system of death
its corruption killing
everything
It must end
We must end it
Time is running out.
--Al Markowitz