Oil spill could reach Atlantic coast:, computer simulation shows

[Liberty Belle]

This video animation, produced with Supercomputers and published in Wired.com, is truly frightening: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/gulf-oil-could-spread-to-atlantic-coast/


Six different scenarios — one is shown in the video above — were run through the computer simulation. In all of them, the oil eventually gets entrained into the Gulf Stream and reaches the Atlantic coast, traveling north at speeds up to 100 miles a day as far north as Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, before heading east into the open ocean. The main differences between the scenarios are in the timing of the oil’s movement.


“We have been asked if and when remnants of the spill could reach the European coastlines,” team member Martin Visbeck of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany said in the press release. “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. But we would like to have this backed up by numbers from some of the best ocean models.”

The NCAR-led simulation was performed on supercomputers based at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The scientists caution that the study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed and published, is not a forecast and is based on movement of a virtual dye that doesn’t resemble oil in some ways. The study also doesn’t take into account factors such as chemical breakdown and degradation of the oil or whether the oil will remain as a slick on the surface, coagulate or mix into the subsurface.



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/gulf-oil-could-spread-to-atlantic-coast/#ixzz0q2KxJjwX

[Jkid]

1. I don't know what to say...