Operational Modeling of North Aegean Oil Spills Forced by Real-Time Met-Ocean Forecasts

Abstract

Over the latest decades, oil marine pollution has posed a vital threat for global ocean health, since spillages of any scale are related to environmental, social and financial impacts. The worldwide increase in oil and gas demand, and the parallel rise in oil and gas production, exploiting particularly coastal and offshore marine deposits, have significantly increased the risk of accidental oil release to the sea. In the present study, an operational oil spill model was applied to test the oil dispersive properties and to reveal the relative magnitude of weathering processes, after an accidental oil spill release along the main tanker transportation route in the North Aegean Sea. Numerical simulations were implemented using the OpenOil transport and fate numerical model, a subclass of the OpenDrift open-source trajectory framework. This model integrates algorithms with several physical processes, such as oil entrainment, vertical mixing, oil resurfacing and oil emulsification. The oil dispersion model was coupled to real-time met-ocean forecasts received from NOAA-GFS and CMEMS. Present simulation results have focused on the impact of turbulent kinetic energy, induced by the background flow field, on the horizontal spreading of particles, as well as on the evolution of oil mass balance and oil mass properties.