Three-dimensional daily hindcast of oil concentrations and oil mass estimates from the far-field modeling of a deepwater oil spill scenario in the Cuban Continental Shelf, using the Connectivity Modeling System on a probabilistic approach

The dataset contains the numerical results of probabilistic forecasts for possible oil spills in the Cuban Western Continental Shelf and two animation figures (*.gif) of model results. The origin of possible oil spills scenarios is deep wells proposed to operate in and around Cabo San Antonio. Oil dispersal and concentrations were simulated using the latest updated version of the oil application of the Connectivity Modeling System (CMS) or oil-CMS. In this version, the specified hydrocarbon pseudo-components are in the same droplet. The post-processing analysis yielded 4-D spatiotemporal data of the oil concentrations and oil mass on a regular horizontal and vertical grid, as well as the time evolution of the horizontally cumulative oil mass for a period of about 6 months. In the present oil spill scenario, a deep-sea blowout is modeled at 22.08N, 85.10W, the oil droplets are released at 1222m depth, or 300m above the hypothetical oil well, in similarity to Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. 3000 oil droplets were released every 2 hours for 87 days, equivalent to a total of 3132000 oil droplets released during the simulation. Initial droplet sizes were determined at random by the CMS in the range of 1-500 micron. Each oil droplet contained three (3) pseudo-components accounting for the differential oil density as follows: 10% of light oil with the density of 800kg/m^3, 75% of the oil with 840 kg/m^3, and 15% of heavy oil with 950 kg/m^3 density. The half-life decay rates of oil fractions were 30 days, 40 days, and 180 days, respectively. The surface evaporation half-life was set to 250 hours; horizontal diffusion was set to 10 m^2/s. Ocean hydrodynamic forcing for the CMS model was coming from the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) for the Gulf of Mexico region on a 0.04-deg. horizontal grid and 40 vertical levels from the surface to 5500m. HYCOM provided daily average 3-D momentum, temperature and salinity forcing fields to the CMS model. The surface wind drift parameterization used surface winds and wind ...