The Deepwater Horizon oil spill trajectory hindcast/forecast based on West Florida Shelf ROMS
This is a joint effort of the Ocean Circulation Group at College of Marine Science,
University of South Florida to track/predict the Deepwater Horizon (Macondo well, designated by the red circle) oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico using simulated drifters/particles. Drifter trajectories were calculated based
on the three-hourly surface currents from the West Florida Shelf ROMS
Nowcast/Forecast System of University of South Florida. Virtual particles were
released from the sunken rig site every three hours since 04/20/2010 18:00
UTC, assuming continual oil spill from the well. The particles (difters) are shown as black dots, and their trajectries in magenta. Sea surface temperature (color contours, units in deg C) was superimposed with the
surface current vectors to indicate the surface ocean circulation. The velocity data were subsampled every the third
grid points in both east and north directions for better visulization.
Questions or comments? Please send email to Dr. Robert H.
Weisberg or Dr.
Yonggang Liu.
Disclaimer:
The nowcast/forecast system and other analyses/data are research products under development. No warranty is made, expressed or implied,
regarding accuracy, or regarding the suitability for any particular application. All rights reserved University of South Florida. Copyright University of South
Florida 05/06/2010.
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