Building on results from RFP-I, The Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) remains focused on advancing fundamental understanding and modeling of the diverse physical mechanisms responsible for hydrocarbon transport in the Gulf of Mexico environment. An integral part of any informed response to a future event, like the Deepwater Horizon incident, requires knowledge of the distribution of pollutants in the water column and the ability to predict where and how fast the pollutants will spread. This information is also crucial for estimating the pollutants’ impact on the local ecosystem and coastal communities. The overall goal of CARTHE is accurate predictive modeling of pollutant transport from ocean-bottom release to landfall on the beach.
This project specifically identifies two topics, whose understanding is critical for oil spill dispersion prediction; namely (i) the dynamics of transport in the near-surface ocean and lower atmosphere, and (ii) transport in deep-ocean plumes.
Beyond enabling a more efficient and more effective response to a future undersea oil release, broader impacts of this project include education and training of graduate students and postdocs, as well as far-reaching applications of the new scientific insight for navigation using local currents, potential off-shore green energy production, the influence of upper-ocean flows on the ocean’s carbon intake in the climate system, a better representation of ocean and atmosphere heat exchanges for hurricane predictions, and finally for public beach safety and welfare.
TM Özgökmen, et al. “The Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE).” Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, 2015-2017 GoMRI Research Consortia (RFP-IV), 2015/01/01 to 2017/12/31, more than $20,000,000 (Dietrich: $225,874).
