Arctic climate change and oil spill risk analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to: 1) describe the effects of climate change in the Arctic and its impact on circulation, 2) describe hindcast data used in the Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Oil Spill Risk Analysis (OSRA) model, 3) evaluate alternatives such as using forecast results in the OSRA model, and 4) recommend future studies. Effects of climate change on winds, sea ice, ocean circulation and river discharge in the Arctic and impacts on surface circulation can be evaluated only through a series of specially designed numerical experiments using high-resolution coupled ice-ocean models to elucidate the sensitivity of the models to various parameterizations or forcings. The results of these experiments will suggest what mechanisms are most important in controlling model response and guide inferences on how OSRA may respond to different climate change scenarios. Climatological change in the Arctic could lead to drastic alterations of wind, sea ice cover and concentration, and surface current fields all of which would influence hypothetical oil spill trajectories. Because of the pace at which conditions are changing, BOEMRE needs to assess whether forecast ice/ocean model results might contain useful information for the purposes of calculating hypothetical oil spill trajectories.

Keywords

Arctic Ocean / climate change / oil spill risk analysis

References

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Acknowledgments

This project was funded through Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Contract M10PC00082 to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The authors wish to thank all the participants in the workshop entitled, “Evaluation of the Use of Hindcast Model Data for OSRA in a Period of Rapidly Changing Conditions.” These participants included: Dr. CJ Beegle-Krause, Research4D, Dr. Heather Crowley, BOEMRE, Dr. Greg Holloway, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dr. Walter Johnson, BOEMRE, Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, Naval Postgraduate School, Dr. Walt Meier, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Dr. Andrey Proshutinsky, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Dr. Michael Steele, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Dr. Muyin Wang, University of Washington, Dr. Thomas Weingartner, University of Alaska, Dr. Jing Zhang, North Carolina A&T University, and Dr. Xiangdong Zhang, University of Alaska.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg