How oil slicks floating on the ocean affect SST?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic-dynamic model showing that oil slicks on the ocean surface increase local SST, cause greater temperature variability, and reduce predictability, highlighting overlooked factors in climate modeling.

Contribution

It presents a novel micro-scale model linking oil slicks to SST changes and their impact on climate system uncertainty.

Findings

Oil slicks increase sea surface temperature.

Oil slicks lead to greater SST variability and fatter distribution tails.

Oil slicks reduce SST predictability and increase system uncertainty.

Abstract

Oil slicks are widely distributed in the ocean today, as a kind of coverage on sea surface, they became a part of ocean environment and affect their surroundings. A stochastic-dynamic theoretical model proposed in this work to illustrate how oil slicks affect global climate from micro scale relation between a piece of oil slick and sea surface temperature (SST) of its surrounding unit area, for SST is an important index of global climate. The model indicate that oil slicks make the sea surface warmer in the future, and the temperature series of the sea surface covered by oil slicks will have greater variance and fatter tails for its distribution and reduce SST predictability from a microcosmic perspective. Thus, more oil infused into the ocean makes the air-sea system more uncertain. These findings indicate that the present air-sea coupled models may lack of sufficient attention to oil slicks floating on the sea surface.