Mapping Surface Oil Extent from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill using ASCAT Backscatter

Utah State University

The damping effects of oil on capillary ocean waves alter the backscattered power of radar measurements made by remote-sensing instruments such as scatterometers. Numerically computed vector winds are input to a wind geophysical model function (GMF) to determine the predicted backscatter from the ocean surface uncontaminated by surface oil. Large differences between predicted backscatter and measured backscatter indicate areas of the ocean surface potentially affected by oil. The 2010 oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico provides a spatial extent large enough to be mapped by the ASCAT scatterometer. In this paper we use ASCAT data and numerically predicted winds to map the spatial extent of surface oil.