Supercomputer oil slick sims predict greasy Atlantic

[FarCenter]

By Timothy Prickett Morgan

Posted in HPC, 7th June 2010 21:21 GMT

Supercomputers are good for more than jsut designing nuclear weapons or making doomsday predictions about climate change. They can depress us in other ways, like showing us the extent of the damage that could be done by BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore rig spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is funded by the US National Science Foundation to do climate modeling, has borrowed some computing capacity at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, loaded up the Parallel Ocean Program (a part of the Community Climate System Model simulation created by NCAR and the US Department of Energy), and dropped some simulated dye in the simulated Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and watched how it disperses over time.

"I've had a lot of people ask me, 'Will the oil reach Florida?'" Synte Peacock, one of the NCAR researchers who did the simulation, said in a report on the early findings released by NCAR. "Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood."




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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/07/ncar_oil_slick_sim/

[JuniperLea]

1. "with impacts that have yet to be understood"

Keep in mind we're not sure if these scientists have correct data with regard to the gusher...

[meeshrox]

2. I share your skepticism in trusting the impacts...

The way they did this model, though, was using a dye tracer. They dropped some virtual dye into their ocean currents model and got this when they ran it for several months. It doesn't include the pattern of oil from what's actually happened. We are pretty confident in our understanding of the ocean/gulf currents, so I'd say this model is solid. The interesting thing for me is that the oil moves from entering the loop current to the NY shore within three weeks (day 71-day 92, approximately)! There are more model results at the group's website. They show the plume at different depths, too.

[nashville_brook]

3. holy f'n shit.

[aquart]

4. What I see is way too close to Long Island.

Even if we don't get a direct hit on the oil, the dead animals, birds, and fish are going to be horrendous.

[Initech]

5. Great. BP proved the Mayans right. This oil spill is gonna kill us all.

[mrJJ]

6. Link to the ucar site

The animation is based on a computer model simulation, using a virtual dye, that assumes weather and current conditions similar to those that occur in a typical year. It is one of a set of six scenarios released today that simulate possible pathways the oil might take under a variety of oceanic conditions. Each of the six scenarios shows the same overall movement of oil through the Gulf to the Atlantic and up the East Coast. However, the timing and fine-scale details differ, depending on the details of the ocean currents in the Gulf

http://www2.ucar.edu/news/oil-spill-animations