OCTOPUS (Ocean Circulation and Transport for Oil Propagation from Underwater Spills)

尽管深水钻井引起的石油井喷很少发生，但其影响可能是毁灭性的，对沿海和深海系统的野生动物和环境造成灾难性的破坏。当石油被释放到海洋中时，它会受到海水各种特性的影响而发生化学、物理和生物变化。然而，决定石油向陆地或深水或浅水生物敏感区域移动的是洋流（以及海面泄漏的风）。因此，作为意外泄漏的准备工作的一部分，从事深钻的石油公司评估其钻井地点附近的洋流结构和变化，以及提供在几个月的泄漏生命周期内可能发生的石油漂移的情景是至关重要的。例如，英国石油公司在法罗-苏格兰海峡拥有许多现有的深层钻井地点。在他们对其中一口井（北尤斯特）的环境声明中，英国石油公司使用挪威气象研究所提供的海洋环流数据来预测石油搁浅。该报告称，石油很可能会漂向挪威北部海岸，而且只会在那里或设得兰群岛搁浅。在南安普顿的国家海洋学中心，我们开发了一种先进的海洋环流模型，可以详细描述世界海洋中任何深度的洋流。使用这个模型，我们进行了类似于BP环境声明的石油释放实验。然而，我们的初步结果表明，尽管主要的威胁确实是针对挪威北部大陆，但泄漏也有很大的可能性到达斯瓦尔巴群岛、冰岛和丹麦的环境敏感地区。此外，残留在深海的石油将向西漂移到北大西洋北部，可能威胁到那里丰富的深海生物。这些结果表明，在预测石油泄漏的深远和潜在的灾难性后果时，依赖单一模型是有风险的。使用有限的复杂性模型可能会导致泄漏响应策略的开发忽略了最终可能成为严重影响的因素。我们的项目旨在与BP和DECC等利益相关者合作，展示国家海洋学中心在海洋建模方面取得的进展，并合作设计模型实验，以更好地预测法罗设得兰地区潜在井喷的影响。这些实验将跟踪石油在水面和深水中的运输，并确定北大西洋北部的变化如何影响石油泄漏影响的范围和严重程度。我们的方法的优点之一是使用了全球海洋模型，这样类似的研究可以很容易地在世界上任何地方的其他深水钻井地点重复。作为这项工作的一部分，我们将在一个互动显示器上制作漂浮的石油和影响它的洋流的可视化图像，以展示该系统的全球范围。

Although oil blowouts from the deep water drilling happen very rarely, their impact can be devastating, causing catastrophic damage to the wildlife and environment in both coastal and deep sea systems. When oil is released into the ocean, it undergoes chemical, physical and biological transformations affected by various seawater properties. However, it is ocean currents (and, for surface spills, wind) that determines the movement of oil towards either landfall or biologically sensitive areas in deep or shallow water. Consequently, as part of preparations for accidental spills, it is of critical importance that oil companies engaged in deep drilling assess the structure and variability of the ocean currents in the vicinity of their drilling locations, as well as provide scenarios of possible oil drift over a spill lifetime period of several months. By way of example, BP has a number of extant deep drilling locations in the Faeroe-Scotland channel. In their environmental statement for one of the wells (North Uist), BP uses ocean circulation data provided by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute to predict oil beaching. This reports that oil will most likely drift towards the northern coast of Norway, and that it will only beach there or on the Shetland Islands. At the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, we have developed an advanced ocean circulation model that allows the detailed description of ocean currents at all depths anywhere in the World Ocean. Using this model we have performed oil release experiments similar to those of the BP environmental statement. However, our preliminary results show that, although the major threat is indeed for the northern Norwegian mainland, there is also a significant probability of the spill reaching environmentally sensitive areas of the Svalbard, Iceland and Denmark. Furthermore, oil remaining at depth will drift west into the northern North Atlantic potentially threatening the abundant deep sea life there.These results illustrate the risk of relying on a single model when forecasting the far-reaching and potentially catastrophic consequences of oil spills. Using limited complexity models may result in the development of spill response strategies that overlook what ultimately may become serious impacts. Our project aims to engage with stakeholders such as BP and DECC to demonstrate advances in ocean modelling achieved by the National Oceanography Centre, and to collaboratively design model experiments to better forecast the impacts of potential blowouts in the Faeroe-Shetland area. These experiments will track the transport of oil both on the surface and in the deep water and determine how variability in the northern North Atlantic may affect the extent and severity of oil spill impacts. One of the advantages of our approach is the use of a global ocean model, such that similar studies can be easily repeated for other deep water drilling locations anywhere in the world. As part of this work, we will produce visualisations of the drifting oil and the ocean currents affecting it within an interactive display that demonstrates the worldwide reach of this system.