| Abstract: | Spilled oil floats and travels across the water’s surface under the influence of wind, currents, and wave action. Wave-induced Stokes drift is an important physical process that can affect surface water particles but that is currently absent from oil spill analyses. In this study, two methods are applied to determine the velocity of Stokes drift, the first calculates velocity from the wind-related formula based upon a one-dimensional frequency spectrum, while the second determines velocity directly from the wave model that was based on a two-dimensional spectrum. The experimental results of numerous models indicated that: (1) oil simulations that include the influence of Stokes drift are more accurate than that those do not; (2) for medium and long-term simulations longer than two days or more, Stokes drift is a significant factor that should not be ignored, and its magnitude can reach about 2% of the wind speed; (3) the velocity of Stokes drift is related to the wind but is not linear. Therefore, Stokes drift cannot simply be replaced or substituted by simply increasing the wind drift factor, which can cause errors in oil spill projections; (4) the Stokes drift velocity obtained from the two-dimensional wave spectrum makes the oil spill simulation more accurate. |
