An international group of scientists from the Hereon Research Centre, part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres and the Institute of Oceanology at BAS, are working to clarify the situation with the pollution of the Black Sea following the accident with Russian tankers carrying fuel oil. The accident was caused by a powerful sea storm resulting in one of the tankers splitting and spilling fuel oil. Analysis and forecasting are significantly hampered by the unknown mode of discharge of the oil products, and the unclear precise time and location of the accident. Scientists have data from the Copernicus program on the regime of currents, winds, and turbulence in the area which allowed the development of model scenarios to simulate the spread of the oil slick regime through the application of the OD-openoil numerical model (https://opendrift.github.io/).
The full information and simulations for predicting the spatial distribution of the spill by volley and gradual release of the oil products are available at https://io-bas.bg/
