TITLE:
Modeling Seabed-Origin Oil Spills Using OpenOil: Case Studies from the Mediterranean Sea
AUTHORS:
Vassilios Papaioannou, Christos G.E. Anagnostopoulos, Konstantinos Vlachos, Anastasia Moumtzidou, Ilias Gialampoukidis, Stefanos Vrochidis, Ioannis Kompatsiaris
KEYWORDS:
Seabed Oil Spill, Oil Weathering, Openoil, Numerical Simulations, Lagrangian Modeling, Mediterranean Spills
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Marine Science,
Vol.15 No.3,
July
10,
2025
ABSTRACT: Seabed-origin oil spills pose distinct challenges in marine pollution management due to their complex transport dynamics and weathering processes. This study applies the OpenDrift’s OpenOil module to simulate the transport and fate of oil in two seabed-origin spill scenarios: (a) the 2019 Baniyas refinery spill in Syria, resulting from leakage in underwater pipelines, and (b) a natural oil seep near Zakynthos, Greece (2017), where hydrocarbons naturally escape from the seafloor. The Baniyas spill was used as a validation case, integrating Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and open-source atmospheric and marine data derived from the Climate Change and Copernicus Marine services to refine model calibration. The Zakynthos seep was analyzed under controlled conditions to assess the abilities of the OpenOil module to simulate naturally occurring oil slicks. Key findings indicate that oil density plays a critical role in evaporation dynamics. Simulations revealed that oils above a specific density threshold showed negligible evaporation, remaining as persistent slicks in the water column, whereas lighter oils exhibited substantial evaporation rates, significantly altering their dispersion behavior.