Paul Voosen, E&E reporter
\nPublished: Tuesday, January 10, 2012<\/p>\n
It’s the most tangible intangible disaster of the past decade.<\/p>\n
Following the undersea blowout of the Deepwater Horizon two years
\nago, a majority of the oil and gas escaping from the rig’s out-of-
\ncontrol well never surfaced. Instead, it flowed in a diffuse layer to
\nthe southwest, thousands of feet below sea level. Largely invisible,
\nthis snaking “plume” nevertheless entered the imaginations of
\nmillions of people — at least until its demise to the Gulf’s vast
\nsize and a host of hungry microbes.<\/p>\n
A compelling image — but it never happened. At least, not the way
\nscientists imagined.<\/p>\n
Rather than flowing in a tidy path to the southwest, pulled along by
\na steady current, the Deepwater Horizon plume was a mess of swirl and
\nslosh. Virgin water exposed to the spill, rather than whisking away
\npermanently, would return after weeks, carrying with it microbes
\nalready primed to chew hydrocarbons, according to a study published
\nyesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n
The study presents a unified theory of the plume, its model results
\nmatching many of the often contradictory observations made by
\nscientists during the first months of the spill. Understanding the
\nbathtub circulation of the Gulf of Mexico suddenly sorted these
\nfindings into a comprehensible whole, said Dave Valentine, the
\npaper’s lead author and a microbial geochemist at the University of
\nCalifornia, Santa Barbara.
\n Click here to watch Dave Valentine’s model of the Deepwater Horizon
\n plume, matched against observations recorded during the accident.”<\/p>\n