Oil-Marine Snow-Mineral Aggregate model distributions-Numerical Model Simulation Results

A numerical model is developed to simulate the interactions of oil, marine snow and riverine sediments to form Marine-Oil-Snow (MOS) in the ocean. The model is developed on a Stochastic Lagrangian Aggregate Model used to simulate the interactions of marine particles by Jokulsdottir, T., and D. Archer (2016), A stochastic, Lagrangian model of sinking biogenic aggregates in the ocean (slams 1.0): model formulation, validation and sensitivity, Geo- scientific Model Development, 9(4), 1455–1476. The model simulates the evolution of aggregate sizes and their settling in the water column and considers marine snow, transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) oil, and sediments particles present in the water. We use the model to simulate the MOS formation event after the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. We selected five stations namely GG01 (28.86N, 88.82W), GG02 (28.94N, 88.06W), GG03 (28.78N, 88.24W), GG04 (28.86N, 88.28W) and GG05 (28.71N, 88.51W) within 45 km from the DWH well and predicted the MOS aggregate distribution in the water column. We used two different initial compositions for the simulations namely Composition 1 (marine Snow - 60%, TEP - 15%, oil- 10%, sediment - 15%) and Composition 2 (marine Snow - 60%, TEP - 15%, oil- 15%, sediment - 10%), with and without the consideration of aggregate break-up in the model simulations. The model predicted particle size distribution in every 5 m depth level at the five stations for all the simulations are submitted with the dataset. The folder and file naming are self-explanatory.