Sources: vulcan.wr.usgs.gov, geography.hunter.cuny.edu

Plumes in the environment
Sources: vulcan.wr.usgs.gov, geography.hunter.cuny.edu, earthobservatory.nasa.gov
Thursday, January 26, 2012
2010: a good year for plumes
• Icelandic volcano, whose eruption caused havoc for
the European airline industry
• BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico, the worst environmental disaster of its kind in
US history
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Icelandic volcano
Source: www.boston.com/thebigpicture
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Icelandic volcano
Ash cloud maps
• Broad ash cloud spelled big trouble for European
airlines
Sources: www.guardian.co.uk, wikipedia
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Icelandic volcano
• Eruption released 250 million cubic meters of ash and
particulate into the atmosphere
• European airspace was essentially closed from April
15, 2010 till April 20, 2010, the largest disruption to
European air travel since WWII
• Immense local impact to agriculture, water and air
quality, tourism, etc.
Source: wikipedia
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Source: www.boston.com/thebigpicture
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Sources: wikipedia, www.boston.com/thebigpicture
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
• Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20,
2010, killing 11 workers
• The resulting oil-gushing seafloor well released
approximately 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, a
fragile ecological system that supports a significant
fishing industry
• Though LA was most severely affected, oil was found
on beaches as far away as TX and FL
• By June 17, 2010, over 220 lawsuits had been filed
against BP, which will take years (decades?) to settle
Source: wikipedia
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Source: dailymail.co.uk
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Plumes arise elsewhere too...
•
•
Pollution from smokestacks
Sewage outflows, etc.
In all these examples, the flow is highly turbulent (possibly multiphase)
and therefore difficult to model without lots of computer firepower.
We* seek to parameterize this very complex flow so as to get insights
into some very basic questions, including:
(1) How does the volume flux vary as one moves away from the
source,
(2) How does the concentration of heat, particulate, pollutant, etc. vary
as one moves way from the source?
* Morton, Taylor, Turner, Baines, Worster, Huppert, Linden, Caulfield, Woods, Kaye, Hunt...
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Summary
•
Resolving these questions gives critical information about a
special, but industrially- and environmentally-relevant, category of
mixing
•
As we shall see, dimensional and scaling analysis shall offer timely
insights along the way
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Icelandic volcano
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyuXr1VsDyo&feature=channel
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-rJH9xB7fk&feature=channel
Thursday, January 26, 2012