ROFFS OCEANOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS FOR THE DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL AREA UPDATED MONDAY 17 MAY 2010 (18:00 HRS)
We received some dramatic and clear synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (thank you Ben Holt) on Saturday that clearly shows that the oil is being pulled towards the Loop Current which can be viewed on our website at (http://www.roffs.com/deepwaterhorizon.html). This afternoon, we received some more dramatic imagery from the NASA MODIS satellite complements of USF/IMaRS that again showed the oil being pulled southeastward towards the Loop Current along the southern side of the large counter-clockwise rotating eddy centered near 86°10'W & 27°55'N. It appears as if the leading edge of the oil has reached the area near 85°35'W & 27°25'N this afternoon. We have included this afternoon's RGB image in today's analysis. We will also be adding a new QuickTime movie to our website this evening showing the circulation in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. We have annotated today's RGB imagery so that you can see the oil. These images confirm again our water mass - sequential image analysis technique that we have been using since the initial accident back on April 21, 2010. See the analyses from last week on our website for other evidence of this. Obviously the oil has continues to move further into the Loop Current system than we had seen since last week using infrared, ocean color and RGB satellite data. This is mainly a result of the large counter-clockwise eddy centered near 86°10'W & 27°25'N.
The question continues to be how fast and how much of this oil will be entrained into the Loop Current. It remains to be seen how much of the oil visible in today's RGB imagery from 87°00'W & 27°25'N to 86°30'W & 27°07'N to 85°45'W & 27°30'N with be circulated north/northwestward back around and towards the core of the large counter-clockwise rotating eddy and how much will be pulled southeastward along the eastern side of the Loop Current. The other critical questions are what is below the slick and what is in the water masses we have been tracking since the original spill? What will we do to stop the impacts of this oil and the other oil moving along throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico?
We were able to see the ocean conditions in the infrared sea surface temperature imagery relatively clearly today using a combination of satellite imagery from yesterday and today. As best as we can determine the northern boundary of the Loop Current has moved north another seven to ten miles northward in the last 24-48 hours and the location of the northern boundary of the Loop Current is near 88°00'W is 27°25'N before angling back southeastward to near 86°30'W & 27°07'N along the southern side of the large eddy. This eddy continues to push the eastern edge of the Loop Current eastward towards 84°30'W between 27°30'N to 26°30'N and as this is occurring the southwestern side of the elongating (now egg shaped) eddy centered near 84°50'W & 25°00'N continues to move southwestward. The southwestern boundary of this feature was observed near 86°08'W & 24°23'N today and this feature appears to have been pulled approximately 20 miles further southwestward since Friday. It remains to be seen if this motion will continue and if it will cause a large clockwise rotating Loop Current eddy to form.
