Completing the Picture of How Oil Weathers in Seawater

T omitigate damage from amarine oil spill, response teams require accurate forecasts of how the oil will degrade and spread over time. Temperature and sunlight both affect the bulk properties of crude oil, but until now the relative importance of each was unclear. Now Danielle Haas Freeman, Collin Ward, and their colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Massachusetts, report results of experiments that address that problem [1]. Their findings suggest that sunlight-weathered oil behaves differently in cold Arctic waters than in tropical oceans. The study adds a missing component to oil-fate predictions and could help guide the development of cleanup protocols that are tailored to specific environments.