Modeling the Agia Zoni II tanker oil spill in Saronic Gulf, Greece

We employed GNOME to simulate the oil spill due to the sinking of the tanker Agia Zoni CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN ICYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I in September 2017 in Saronic Gulf. We performed simulations using various combinations of wind and current input, and values of the GNOME parameters, and compared the simulated oil spill trajectories with coastal pollution and satellite data. The best scenario, i.e., the combination that showed the most satisfactory agreement with field data, uses wind data from one of the closest meteorological stations, calculated currents by a hydrodynamic model and default values of the parameters, except for the windage and the refloat half-life whose proposed values are 3-4 % and 6 h, respectively. Neglecting the effect of the wind in the best scenario worsened the agreement. Mass balance results depicted that approximately 47 % of the total 500 tons of the oil spill ended up on the coastline of Attica peninsula and Salamina Island.

Automated summary

We used GNOME to simulate the oil spill from the sinking of the tanker Agia Zoni I in September 2017. Different combinations of wind and current input, as well as GNOME parameter values, were tested and compared with field and satellite data. The best scenario used wind data from the closest meteorological station, calculated currents from a hydrodynamic model, and default parameter values with windage at 3-4% and refloat half-life at 6 hours. Neglecting the effect of wind worsened the agreement with the data. Approximately 47% of the total 500 tons of oil spill ended up on the coastlines of Attica peninsula and Salamina Island.