ESTIMATING SURFACE OIL-SPILL TRANSPORT DUE TO WIND IN THE ARABIAN GULF

Oil spill models typically compute advection of an oil spill on the sea surface as a simple vectorial weighted sum of the wind velocity and the depth-averaged current velocity due to forces other than wind. Appropriate values for the weights needed to estimate wind-induced surface oil spill speed and the associated deflection angle suitable for the Arabian Gulf were computed. The estimates were based on the results of a series of drifting buoy experiments carried out in the Arabian Gulf during 1983-1984. Two approaches for estimating the deflection angle were proposed: the first assumed the angle to be constant, whereas the second assumed the angle to vary with wind.