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

尽管深水钻探引起的石油井喷非常罕见，但它们的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，它会经历化学、物理和生物变化，受到各种海水性质的影响。然而，是洋流(对于表面泄漏，是风)决定了石油向深水或浅水的登陆或生物敏感区域的移动。因此，作为意外漏油准备工作的一部分，从事深井钻探的石油公司必须评估其钻探地点附近洋流的结构和变化性，并提供在几个月的漏油生命期内可能发生油类漂移的情景。举例来说，英国石油公司在法罗-苏格兰海峡有许多现存的深水钻探地点。在他们对其中一口油井(North Uist)的环境声明中，BP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。报告称，石油很可能会向挪威北部海岸漂移，而且只会在那里或设得兰群岛上搁浅。在南安普敦的国家海洋学中心，我们开发了一种先进的海洋环流模型，可以详细描述世界大洋任何地方所有深度的洋流。利用该模型，我们进行了与BP环境声明类似的释油实验。然而，我们的初步结果表明，尽管主要威胁确实来自挪威北部大陆，但漏油也很有可能到达斯瓦尔巴特群岛、冰岛和丹麦等环境敏感地区。此外，留在海底的石油将向西漂流到北大西洋北部，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漏油响应策略的发展，而忽略了最终可能产生的严重影响。我们的项目旨在与BP和DECC等利益攸关方合作，展示国家海洋学中心在海洋模拟方面取得的进展，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可能如何影响石油泄漏影响的程度和严重程度。我们方法的优势之一是使用全球海洋模型，这样类似的研究就可以很容易地在世界任何地方的其他深水钻探地点重复进行。作为这项工作的一部分，我们将在一个互动展示中制作漂浮的石油和影响它的洋流的可视化，展示该系统的全球覆盖范围。

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.