Simulation of Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

HAN Shuzong; ZHANG Caixia

Abstract：Oil Spill can do harm to marine life in the oceans,wetlands and estuaries.For the purpose of limiting the damage by a spill and facilitating cleanup efforts,it is essential to get knowledge about the spill traj ectory and the area of oil slicks and predict oil drift with winds and currents.The obj ective of this work is to simulate the oil drift of"Deepwater Horizon"oil spill in Gulf of Mexico between May 8, 2010 and May 11,2010 with GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment)model.O-cean currents from GOM HYCOM outputs and winds from CFSR(Climate Forecast System Reanalysis) were used to drive the GNOME model during simulation.Comparisons between simulations and satel-lite observations were done and the results showed that the simulation agreed well with oil spill extent maps getting from the website of center for Satellite Based Crisis Information.The effects from uncer-tainty of ocean currents on the simulation results were also studied as well.