Most BP Oil Still Pollutes the Gulf, Scientists Conclude
http://www.usnews.com/science/articl....html?PageNr=1Two new analyses report that huge plumes of oil generated by the BP spill continue to roam deep within the Gulf of Mexico and appear disturbingly stable. Although some natural breakdown of hydrocarbons in the oil is underway, both new analyses report evidence that this biodegradation is very slow.
These findings contradict an Aug. 2 report by the National Incident Command, a largely federal group that has been coordinating management and cleanup of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil (almost 206 million gallons) escaped from the damaged well before it was successfully capped on July 15. Some 17 percent was captured before it fouled the water, the NIC reports.
But in testimony August 19 before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Ian MacDonald of Florida State University in Tallahassee cited data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that he said showed only 10 percent of the spewed BP oil “was actually removed from the ocean” and that only “a fraction, perhaps 10 percent, will have evaporated.” The remaining oil still fouls the Gulf, he said.
New analyses by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Ins ution in Massachusetts and the Georgia Sea Grant at the University of Georgia in Athens also suggest that much of the BP oil has not been behaving as scientists would have expected.
For instance, in a paper online in Science August 19 the Woods Hole team describes data from a June cruise that mapped a huge plume of diffuse hydrocarbons more than 35 kilometers long. As this cloud of oil flowed roughly 1,100 meters below the surface, it maintained a configuration that was roughly 200 meters high, up to 2 kilometers wide and traveling at about 6.5 kilometers per day. Over the entire span of the plume studied, the cloud’s height “only varied by tens of meters,” notes Woods Hole team leader Richard Camilli.
Researchers cruising the Gulf in early June aboard a NOAA ship, the Gordon Gunter, also found evidence of that hydrocarbon plume. Like the Woods Hole team, these scientists collected much of their data using an autonomous underwater vehicle, in this case a torpedo-like chemical sensing laboratory developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Ins ute.
“We were in the same area as the Woods Hole group,” notes John Ryan of MBARI, and similarly found a hydrocarbon plume below 1,000 meters.
“We’re not sure why this plume set up at this depth,” says Camilli, “but it appears to have persisted for at least several weeks or months. And it appears very stable, but we really don’t know why yet.”
“I’m not shocked, but actually pleasantly surprised [by these data],” says Roberto Camassa, who directs the Center for Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the laboratory, this fluid dynamicist and his colleagues have been studying oil plume formation. He says the buildup of stable deep plumes make sense, based on the evolving science of interactions between high-velocity oil and cold, slow-moving waters.
“In our lab experiments, things mainly get trapped based on their density,” Camassa observes. “So I would expect to find a somewhat sharp transition in density down there, and with such stratification the oil could persist for a long, long time.”
Oil in the plume hasn’t ascended to the surface, he explains, because if droplets are small enough they become neutrally buoyant and move with the water. Camassa’s lab studies suggest that the high-velocity spray of oil from the BP blowout would essentially have atomized the crude oil into microdroplets.
New modeling analyses of the BP oil spill by researchers at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University also largely predict what the WHOI team has just reported, notes Robert Hallberg of NOAA.
His group’s findings — due to be published soon in Geophysical Research Letters — forecast not only that much of the oil spewed at great depth will break up into small particles that quickly become neutrally buoyant, but also that the breakdown of oil by microbes will proceed very slowly. The bugs will eventually eat the hydrocarbons, but temperature can dictate how quickly they scarf oil down. “It’s analogous to leaving a sandwich on the counter versus putting it in the refrigerator,” Halberg says.
The NOAA-Princeton team’s computer analyses also suggest why deep-sea plumes can hang around for months or longer. Currents at great depths, two-thirds of a mile below the surface, move far more slowly than those near shorelines or the surface. So don’t expect deep hydrocarbon plumes to swoosh rapidly out into the Atlantic, Hallberg says. They’re more likely to slosh back and forth with the tides and in response to local eddies. Indeed, his group’s modeling data suggest “they will stay very much confined — within, say, about 100 kilometers of the spill site.”
He predicts that if the Woods Hole team resurveyed the plume site three to nine months from now, it would likely still find much of the oil there. By then, microbes may be dining on the hydrocarbons in earnest, locally drawing down oxygen levels. In the deep ocean, Hallberg notes, oxygen isn’t replenished quickly, so any losses tend to ac ulate over time. "According to our simulations, these [very low oxygen] areas will be peaking in October," he says, potentially making some portions of the northern Gulf inhospitable to sea life.
The Woods Hole team wouldn’t speculate about how much of BP’s oil and methane has ended up in the plume they measured, or how many similar plumes might be snaking along the Gulf’s seafloor. But an August 17 report by the University of Georgia in Athens and Georgia Sea Grant attempts just that. The Georgia analysis estimates that between 70 and 79 percent of the BP oil is still in the water.
A panel of experts convened by the Georgia team calculated what share of subsurface BP oil has likely degraded and now estimates it could be just “8 percent of the total oil released into the water.”
Oil that has resisted dispersion and evaporation likely will “remain potentially harmful for decades,” MacDonald said at the congressional hearing, adding: “I expect the hydrocarbon imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable in the marine environment for the rest of my life.”
You can find analysis to support any position; there are scientists willing to lie for a political narrative (see "global war... er... climate change") ...let's see if the oil - if it's actually present in the quan ies claimed - actually causes a problem before it completely dissipates.
And, if DarrinS lies, so does the Obama administration -- it was they that said 75% of the oil was gone.
Yoni thought Bush was lying when he said Saddam had no WMDs.
Parker.
I can't be calling both you and Bouton's "Chicken Little." I guess I'll have a tough choice these next few days...
Who will win the le?
Obama has botched this whole damn thing.
And yeah...his admin is lying for political gain/playing damage control.
Meh, wake me when the oil causes a problem commensurate with all the whining...or, better, when the oil causes a problem commensurate with those caused by the administration's response to the oil spill.
You Repugs are the s of the Earth. What pathetic tools you are; now reduced to propaganda machines for a company that's killed its own workers in negligence (multiple times) and dumped millions of gallons of oil into our gulf. BP ABSOLUTELY OWNS YOU. Dance, peasant, dance!
welfare babies aren't allowed choices.
youre only interested in the partisan battle. you dont gve a damn about the damage to the gulf, the crush of big gov/big oil/big corps, the lies propogated by your elected officials, the state of our environment for future generations, etc. your one of the many sheep.
Will do.
I have yet to figure out how someone who claims to be so successful can be so stupid.
Did you inherit all your money?
For instance, in a paper online in Science August 19 the Woods Hole team describes data from a June cruise that mapped a huge plume of diffuse hydrocarbons more than 35 kilometers long.
Yawn. Yet another reporting of the 22 mile long hydrocarbon plume spotted in June.
Mmkay, thanks again.
Thunder Bay (1953)
Great movie
Last time I checked it was a democratic administration saying everything was hunky dory.
And the Woods Hole data was from JUNE.
*yawn*
This message is hidden because Goran Dragic is on your ignore list.
Wouldn't it be prudent to try and fix the problem before it causes too much of a disaster? The wait and see approach is pretty much what started this whole mess in the first place. (i.e. we can do it this way, cut corners, and save money, because hey, nothing bad has happened ye- KA BOOM)
Did Darrin just mock someone else for using the race card? Does anyone here ever pull the race card faster than Darrin?
Mocking those that play the race card is not the same as playing the race card, but nice try.
Actually in most of the threads you bring it up in no one has even mentioned race. You simply bust it out like a rapid fire inflatable strawman ready to go.
When you are the introducer of race into an argument you most certainly are pulling the race card.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of the left's use of racism, group politics, and class warfare is not playing the race card.
Bringing up race where no one else has is playing the race card.
An example: Pointing out how the left whitewashes black on hispanic 'bias' crime is showing how they are hypocrites. I'm not calling lefties biggots or racists. I guess you can't tell the difference.
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