Hereon researchers model oil slick in the Black Sea
Two ships laden with heavy oil crashed off the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea in mid-December 2024. The Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Waters asked Prof Emil Stanev from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon to predict the spread of the oil slick. Stanev was quickly able to give the all-clear locally: his simulations showed that the oil would not reach Bulgaria in the short term. They were subsequently verified with real data. The study shows how successful scientifically based warning systems can be in case of marine environmental disasters.
On December 15, 2024, a storm with wind force 8 raged across the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov between the Crimean Peninsula and the Taman Peninsula. The oil tankers Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239 got into sea distress there. One broke in two, the other ran aground. Both lost thousands of tons of oil. At the request of the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Waters, Stanev immediately made calculations. He formed a team at Hereon with Dr Joanna Staneva, Dr Marcel Ricker and Dr Bughsin Djath.
Cooperation through Helmholtz project
Stanev works at the Hereon Institute of Coastal Systems - Analysis and Modeling and at the University of Sofia “St. Kliment of Ohrid” in Bulgaria. He obtained additional support from Violeta Slabakova and Dr Ivelina Zlateva from the Institute of Oceanology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IO-BAS). Hereon and IO-BAS are already working together in the Helmholtz partnering project “SEA-ReCap” and in the EU project “DOORS” under the leadership of Joanna Staneva. They are developing warning systems for marine environmental disasters.
This numerical simulation of the oil spreading near the Kerch Strait shows how the oil spreads from the tankers (green) to the south-east across the water (blue), then drifts northwards and lands on the Russian coast (red). Source: Hereon/Marcel Ricker
“To predict the spread of the oil slick, we needed data on the location of the ships involved in the accident, wind speeds, currents and waves over the coming days,” says Stanev. This was difficult because there weren't any significant satellite data yet due to the cloud cover during the storm. The researchers therefore initially only used data from the European Copernicus earth observation program. They calculated various scenarios. All of them showed a surprising result: the oil spread first to the south-east and then to the north, where it washed up on the Russian coasts. It did not follow the main westward current. With this current, it would have spread across the entire Black Sea - all the way to the Bulgarian coast. The scientists attribute the fact that this did not happen to the strong storm from the northwest.
The first satellite images were available on December 18. The researchers found no significant oil residue on them. “This suggests that a large part of the oil had already landed on the Russian coast in the north on December 18,” says Stanev. News agencies confirmed this a few days later.
A chance for governments
Stanev and his team were able to correctly predict the spread of the oil with their computer models. If their calculations had shown that the oil would reach Bulgaria, the government would have been able to implement protective measurements in time. In the Kerch Strait, a more precise damage assessment and effective measurements were not possible because of the strained international situation in the region, says Stanev.
The Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Waters published a report by Stanev and his team online on December 16, 2024, to inform the public:
More information
Institute of Coastal Systems - Analysis and Modeling Copernicus Marine Data Store
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