HURRICANE HAVOC: Hurricane Alex, pictured here on June 29, 2010 via NASA's GOES-13 satellite, was centered in the southern Gulf of Mexico and relatively weak, but it still sent wind, waves and rain in the direction of the ongoing oil spill.
Image: NASA/GOES Project
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Hurricane Alex rumbled through the Gulf of Mexico recently, disrupting efforts to capture or clean up the oil gushing from BP's Macondo well and giving a preview of what a powerful tropical cyclone might do at the ongoing environmental disaster. With everyone from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to Columbia University scientists predicting that this year’s hurricane season will be more active than normal, Alex is likely to foreshadow disruptions to come.
So what does a storm with the energy potential of 10,000 nuclear bombs do to an oil spill covering roughly 6,500 square kilometers?
"The oil is not going to be up in the clouds and raining down on people," says oceanographer Christopher Zappa of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Or as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put it in a June 23 statement, "EPA has no data, information or scientific basis that suggests that oil mixed with dispersant could possibly evaporate from the Gulf into the water cycle."
Of course, sea spray and evaporating water will carry the oil and any chemical dispersants with them, but it probably won't be an apocalyptic sight or experience. "There likely will be little traces of the hydrocarbons in the water that is condensed to form rain, but it will likely make up less than normal pollution does," says research meteorologist Frank Marks, director of hurricane research at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Fla. "The amount of water vapor evaporated that might contain hydrocarbons related to the spill will be very, very small." But it will be there. Already, the EPA states on its Web site that the agency has detected "pollutants associated with oil," such as volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hydrogen sulfide, in Gulf shore air in "low levels."
And this polluted air and water vapor certainly will be carried to the near shore and left as an oily residue on everything from trees to electrical transformers, just as the salt from seawater often coats several kilometers inland in the wake of a hurricane. "If there's oil in the water, it will be coming along with it to some extent," says marine physicist Rick Luettich of the University of North Carolina. "I don't know how significant the impact will be."
As of now, NOAA is predicting 14 to 23 named storms—the most tropical cyclones ever anticipated by the U.S. government agency in its several decades of forecasts. "A variety of things, all of which are conducive to the formation and propagation of tropical cyclones, are in place this year," Luettich says. "We have to look at the 2005 season. That is the only one we are aware of that seems to be comparable to what we're expecting could happen this year." In that year, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused their own dispersed oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico, along with devastating New Orleans and the Gulf Coast—and there were 28 storms, all told. In 2010, sea surface temperatures—the primary fuel of hurricanes—are already higher than in 2005. "It's actually at unprecedented levels," Greg Holland, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Earth System Laboratory, testified to Congress on June 30. "It's a combination of global warming and natural variability."
Already storms have caused lightning strikes on the Deepwater Horizon rig pumping oil from the broken well, shutting the rig down, and even the relatively minor Hurricane Alex halted relief efforts, preventing the skimming or burning of roughly 60,000 barrels of oil over three days. "The weather hits us on several fronts: one, in our inability to recover and, two, it does break down that boom and make it more permeable [to oil]," said Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft of the U.S. Coast Guard during a July 2 press briefing on the impacts of Alex, including the suspension of skimming and burning as well as the displacement of the boom protecting the coastline. "Unfortunately, Mother Nature has voted against us as we're staging up this response."
Dispersal and movement
First and foremost, according to scientists, hurricane-force winds in excess of 119 kilometers per hour further mix and disperse the oil itself. "A lot of it will get mixed in the water column," Luettich says. "That will help disperse it a bit and help it be degraded more quickly, so that's probably a good thing,"
Not so good: "It's also going to move the oil," adds Zappa, including both the oil slick visible at the surface and the invisible oil plumes in the seawater. How exactly it moves the oil—whether sending it surging inland or pushing it further out to sea—will depend on exactly where the storm hits. Hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere always spin counterclockwise. So a tropical cyclone that passes to the left (or west) of the bulk of the oil spill would push it closer to shore, while one that passes to the right (or east) would push it further out to sea. "A hurricane that went right up the west coast of Florida, a lot of the oil would be on the left-hand side of that, so it might get drawn offshore," Luettich notes. "A hurricane on Katrina's path would push a lot of stuff onto shore, given where a lot of the oil is right now."
He continues: "A hurricane like Ike [in 2008] could move that oil pretty large distances. It could take oil that is near the Mississippi Delta or even east of it and move it around to the Texas coast so Galveston could see it."
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6 Comments
Add CommentIt seems that a hurricane can expose the land to pollutants by means other than sea spray and evaporating water: any lighter than sea water chemical elements might be the first ashore in any major storm surge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHas a major hurricane ever come ashore coincidental with a comparable oil 'spill' before? I suspect not - in which case perhaps NOAA should more seriously consider the potential impacts.
Even a few waterspouts could produce more serious impact than those dismissively reported here.
There has never been a comparable oil 'spill'. The Ixtoc I spill (which if we were consistent would be called the Sedco 135-F, since that was the name of the semi-submersible rig that was drilling the Ixtoc I well when the blowout occurred) comes closest. Category 1 Hurricane Henri wandered around the Bay of Campeche, but did not pass over the site of the leaking well. Henri dissipated without ever making land fall.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Already storms have caused lightning strikes on the Deepwater Horizon rig pumping oil from the broken well"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Deepwater Horizon is the rig that was drilling the well when the blowout occurred. It sank and is now lying on the Gulf floor under more than 5,000 feet of water. The vessels that have been involved in collecting and/0r flaring off the oil and gas being captured from the well are the Discoverer Enterprise, the Q4000 and the Helix Producer.
The Ixtoc I spill was actually far worse than this one. That little fact is suppressed because it demonstrates what environmentalists don't want you to know: oil is biodegradable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough - In at least some sense you're right, as there are microbes that ingest certain types of oil. Any biodegradation takes time, however: the environmental impact must be assessed before, during and after any biodegradation and cleanup. Wikepedia's entry on this 'oil spill' (oil well blowout) states:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, Horizon's oil is a heavier blend which contains asphalt-like substances. According to Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, this type of oil emulsifies well, making a "major sticky mess". Once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, does not rinse off as easily, cannot be eaten by microbes as easily, and does not burn as well. "That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons", Overton said."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
In the meantime, we will justifiably be inundated with images of oil covered birds, dead fish, unemployed fishermen, empty hotel rooms, etc. Hopefully enough people can be employed long enough to effect a laborious and time consuming cleanup.
In addition to the IXTOC spill, Katrina and Rita unleashed 250,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf. Miracle of miracles, nobody, except MMS and affected oil companies, knew much about it. These hurricanes lifted the oil and it basically disappeared, likely forming 1 part in several billion/trillion within the atmosphere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe certainly need better containment strategies for the inevitable next disaster, which may lie 50,000 new wells in the future.
BTW the API rating of oil in close by reservoirs approximates 30, so the Macando crude though on the heavy side, certainly floats to the surface- at least until it weathers and loses the lighter hydrocarbons, of which methane represents about 40-60% of the composition.
For sure, the Macondo 252 spill represents a serious environmental blow, but the misinformation propagated by many environmentalists drives sympathetic ears far from where many of them want us to go.