Follow up to postings on the Gulf Coast oil spill, this Op-Ed, The Measure of a Disaster – Authors – Ian R. MacDonald is a professor of oceanography at Florida State University. John Amos is the president of SkyTruth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems. Timothy Crone is a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Steve Wereley is a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.]
“It is not surprising that seafloor release estimates are two to three times higher than what remote sensing of surface oil would indicate. Application of dispersants, dissolution into the water and evaporation into the air potentially remove significant fractions of the surface oil although much of the oil could remain below the surface. And because the oil is escaping in jets at very high pressure, it is broken into tiny droplets, which arent likely to float to the surface and may form layers thousands of feet underwater. At present, publicly known evidence for deep oil plumes consists of measured profiles of ocean color and oxygen concentration. The profiles show multiple, distinct layers 150 feet thick at depths from 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Hydrocarbon analysis that would confirm that oil caused these layers has not been released.”
See also AP: Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
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