Oil spills near La Coruña (Spain)

The ERS-1 SAR image of the bay of La Coruña, Spain was acquired on 13 December 1992, ten days after the oil tanker "Agean Sea" ran aground near La Coruña harbour, releasing thousands of tons of crude oil into the sea.
During the days after the accident, the winds were light and from the south-west, turning north-westerly on 7 December with a wind speed maximum of 23 m/s. From December 10 to 12, the wind blew from the north-east with a speed of up to 13 m/s.
In the SAR image, the dark areas in the bay may be caused by low winds (less than 3 m/s), but observations made from helicopters indicate that the 70'000 tons of crude oil spilt during the oil tanker accident polluted the whole bay. Outside the bay the wind speed is higher than 3 m/s, and the dark areas along the coast north of the bay may indicate that some of the oil has drifted north-eastward during the first period when the winds came from the south. This ERS-1 SAR image covers an area of 50 by 50 km.

See the interpreted image to better identify the feature.

Areas affected by such huge pollution need to be monitored, and for some time ERS-1 provided this opportunity.
The following images are available:
13-12-1992
01-01-1993
21-05-1993
30-07-1993
12-05-1994

(NERSC, Bergen, Norway)

(ERS Data Utilization Section ESA/ESRIN)

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry