The Mobile, Alabama Press-Register has published an article by Ben Raines with an alarming prediction. If the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico shrugs off all control – the crippled blowout preventer, the wellhead, and any remaining control valves or baffles impeding the flow of oil and gas through the well – the rate […]
We just learned that oil is now beginning to wash up on the beaches of the Mississippi Delta. This afternoon’s clear-sky NASA/MODIS satellite image shows the full extent of the slick, with oil covering 2,256 square miles: Today SkyTruth’s president did an interview on CNBC. You can watch it here; our bit starts at about […]
Just five months ago, SkyTruth’s President testified to Congress about the risks posed by offshore drilling. Now we’re seeing a catastrophic spill in the Gulf that could soon surpass the sorry benchmark set 20 years ago by the 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill. SkyTruth is beginning to get radar satellite images showing the oil slick from […]
Based on SkyTruth’s latest satellite observations today of the size of the oil slick and published data on the thickness of floating oil at sea that produces a visible sheen (1 micron, or 0.000001 meters) we think the official estimate of the spill rate from the damaged well has been significantly too low. Immediately after […]
We just processed a NASA/MODIS image taken from the Terra satellite this afternoon that shows slicks spread across 2,233 square miles, and within 22 miles of shore. See it here. The image suffers from clouds and haze (a problem we don’t have to deal with on radar images) so we used somewhat more sophisticated spectral […]