Sunny or cloudy, as a forecaster I have often said this is one of the toughest challenges for us on a daily basis. It would seem so easy. Will there be clouds? How many? Morning fog? I still feel we are right more than we are wrong, but that's due to us learning from the previous day. There are times, like the first weekend in May, where 24 hours ahead it looks one way when the next morning the only thing that is clear is how we busted our cloud forecast.
I say this because I have to assume forecasting 24, 48 and 72 hours out when it comes to the large
ever growing oil slick in the gulf has to be a monumental task. Don't get me wrong, I think the federal government and colleges have done an amazing job up until this point of getting out and rolling out the latest in technology. This week the St
Petersburg College of Marine Science put together a composite site of 4 ocean current models. The models have been adjusted to forecast possible oil locations up to 48 hours out. This is just one of an ever growing list of tools scientist have at their disposal to locate and eventually fight oil coming ashore. Can we win? Perhaps, but this fight runs far deeper than what we can see at the surface.
Let's talk about just how monumental forecasting oil in the Gulf really is. You're taking a well planted five thousand feet below a fluid surface and are
guesstimating exactly where the oil will surface at. So before the winds that we so often are talking about even impact the oil the small particles have traveled about a mile already. The good news is that it does appear that when looking at the big picture the window or area where oil is surfacing is relatively small. Then the oil sloshes around for days. Cooking and changing its density and texture until eventually becoming tar balls which are often found along the leading edge of the oil slick. I will take my job
any day to trying to forecast this slick.
So how are scientist forecasting where the oil is going to be? As
Plaquemines parish president Billy
Nungesser said last weekend "we're throwing t
he kitchen sink at it." He's right. One could argue the science of locating oil in the gulf and tracking it began May 13, 2006 when
NASA's MODIS camera on their Terra Satellite caught an early morning glint out in the Gulf. after scientist researched it they determined the lines you see here are from the natural process of oil seeping out from the ocean floor. since then they have captured and successfully followed the spread of oil visibly from their two satellites containing
MODIS cameras across the globe.
While the
MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer) has been the early star with it's crystal clear and high resolution pictures of the spill, it's beginning to take a back seat to fluid and dynamic forecast models. Many colleges have models already in place that only need minor tweaks to at least make them valid. If our worst fears come true, and weeks turn into months when it comes to stopping the oil leak the models will only become better as the small numbers behind the output are refined for better successes in forecasting. Basically, they'll get better as the news could potentially get worse.
The final way we are forecasting and fighting the oil is literally in the water. Boats, hundreds out every day locating, tracking, fighting and reporting on what they are literally seeing. Hovering more than 400 miles above the Earth's poles, every
MODIS pixel is equal to 500 meters. That is awesome but it isn't precise enough to locate tar balls, or the smallest slicks. There just is no known substitute for human interaction and how precise an army fighting together can accomplish.
You base your forecast on what you see while using model data to help you see ahead. In time we may rely on models a little more, but for right now there is no substitution for looking at where the oil is and where the currents and winds will take it. It is just like forecasting clouds, sometimes an inexact science. There is some good news though. Unlike rain and storms and like forecasting clouds, oil forecasting is something that small errors on our part are generally overlooked by you the viewer. Here's more good news. Boom operators are putting the boom down and restoring our coastline's natural barrier island protection as we speak. We don't have to be exact. we know it is coming and as precise as we try to be, we know that it will eventually impact nearly all of
Louisiana's eastern coastline, the Mississippi coastline and will move into Lake Pontchartrain at some point. Leaders aren't waiting for a forecast they are putting the barriers up right now, using our forecast to determine the areas most at risk.
