Center for Water and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Bldg. 119, Austin, TX, United States of America.
Center for Water and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin, 10100 Burnet Road, Bldg. 119, Austin, TX, United States of America.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2020 Apr;153:110958. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.110958. Epub 2020 Feb 13.
Oil spills caused by ship collisions and offshore oil wells are an ongoing risk for estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The fate and transport of the oil spill across the interface between a bar-built estuary and the adjacent coast are influenced by multi-scale forcing mechanisms and their corresponding interactions. Of primary interest are the alongshore currents on the shelf encountering strong tidal flows at the estuary entrance. A new cross-scale model was developed for Galveston Bay to reproduce the multi-scale flows. The model was employed in regionally-distributed numerical Lagrangian experiments to investigate the oil spill transport across the shelf-estuary interface. The influence of the multi-scale flows on the oil spill transport was characterized in terms of Lagrangian connectivity and Lagrangian flushing. The new Galveston Bay model was also used to evaluate the Texas City "Y" spill and resulted in a reasonable agreement with the NOAA observations. This research enhances our understanding of the oil transport across the threshold between two contiguous water systems and highlights the importance of resolving the multi-scale flows for the purpose of oil spill predictions.
船舶碰撞和海上油井造成的溢油事故是墨西哥湾北部河口面临的持续风险。溢油在堤岸型河口与相邻海岸之间的界面上的运移受到多尺度强迫机制及其相应相互作用的影响。最引人关注的是在河口入口处遇到强潮流的陆架上的沿岸流。为加尔维斯顿湾开发了一种新的跨尺度模型，以再现多尺度流。该模型被用于区域分布式数值拉格朗日实验，以研究溢油在陆架-河口界面上的输移。利用拉格朗日连通性和拉格朗日冲刷来描述多尺度流对溢油输移的影响。新的加尔维斯顿湾模型还用于评估德克萨斯城“Y”溢油事件，结果与美国国家海洋和大气管理局的观测结果相当吻合。这项研究增强了我们对两种连续水系之间的油运移的理解，并强调了为了进行溢油预测而解决多尺度流的重要性。
