Villy Kourafalou: Florida is vulnerable to the Gulf spill

Gainesville Sun , Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Correspondent :
Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico sounds distant from our coasts. Floridians appear relieved that the new zones are far from the Florida beaches. However, the Gulf interior is well connected to shelf and coastal areas through the Loop Current/Florida Current system (the local part of the Gulf Stream). In the Gulf, these currents change within days or weeks, and large recirculating features (eddies) travel along them. These eddies act as carriers of various substances, moving them great distances, relatively quickly, from the Gulf interior toward vulnerable shelf and coastal areas.

The Florida Keys and the beaches from Miami to West Palm are particularly vulnerable, due to their proximity to the Florida Current and eddies in the Straits of Florida. The narrow Keys shelf also plays a role, because its topography causes the eddies to break apart and deliver substances, which can be good (like fish larvae and nutrients) or bad (like pollutants) to the shore. We know this from decades of measurements and through the recent development of a detailed biophysical observational and modeling system around the Florida Keys’ coral reefs, developed at the University of Miami.

Just as weather prediction has become a fundamental tool in everyday life, ocean prediction has been emerging to carry out similar capabilities in the marine environment. Sophisticated models that integrate observations are being developed for the Gulf of Mexico, going from global to regional to coastal models. We now have the capability to use supercomputers to compile these data to create high-resolution models that highlight the impact of offshore currents on coastal areas.

Unfortunately, sustained operations for coastal observing systems and models of high resolution around the Gulf are not in place yet, which is exactly what is needed for the detailed prediction required in this case. But any attempt to predict the oil spill’s fate needs to incorporate at least regional models of circulation and enhance them with biological, geological and chemical models that address the spill’s characteristics and impacts. In the long term, such systems have to be sustained and continuously improved, then coupled to the atmospheric models to generate more comprehensive environmental predictions.

We know that this is the correct pathway to address a broad range of concerns from hurricanes to climate change, to human-made natural disasters like this oil spill. The debate on offshore drilling in the Gulf should include the data accumulated by oceanographers and the models of ocean prediction that assimilate data in real time and provide a wealth of information that could help preserve our environment and even save lives.

Any exploration of marine resources should include scientific support for management, in tandem with sustained ability of rapid response to environmental hazards. We should not wait for a significant environmental catastrophe to start thinking of putting a critical framework in place.

 
SOURCE : http://www.gainesville.com/article/20100503/NEWS/100509866?Title=Villy-Kourafalou-Florida-is-vulnerable-to-the-Gulf-spill
 


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