Good morning! The University of South Florida College of Marine Science issued an interesting report yesterday on the future movements of the oil slick now that it has become involved with the fast-moving Gulf loop current. You can view an animation of their forecast models here. In summary, they all show the oil that was in the "tentacle" of the Gulf loop current we talked about yesterday following that stream of water directly into the main current. As we've been talking about, once the oil becomes integrated into the loop current, it has nowhere to go but south into the Florida Straits and then eventually up the east coast.
Uncertain is what the concentration of surface oil will be as it moves toward the Keys (again, remember the loop current passes around 200 miles west of southwest Florida, so this continues to not be any immediate concern to us). Via evaporation and dilution (as the "dirty water" mixes with "clean water"), the concentration of surface oil will not be nearly as high as it enters the Keys compared to what it is near the foot print of the oil spill closer to the central Gulf coast. And, remember, a bigger issue is what we can't see underneath the water surface -- several probes have found large underwater plumes that will move with deeper Gulf ocean currents, which are much slower than surface currents. The potential arrival of any of this deeper supply of underwater oil is still many weeks away from the Florida Straits.
The Gulf loop current moves at about 3-5 mph, meaning from the site of the oil slick to Key West, the transport time is only around 5 days. The modeling supports this (as you can see in the animations). The College of Marine Science extrapolated the models beyond May 22nd (assuming everything stays the same) to determine the earliest arrival of oil on the east coast (near Miami) would be around Memorial Day weekend. Bottom line: some form of oil is headed toward the Keys and the east coast, it's only a matter of time. What the concentration of that oil will be on arrival though is still largely uncertain!
Brian
