Refugio GNOME NRDA Shoreline Oiling: NOAA Hindcast Model for May 2015 Spill

NOAA's GNOME model hindcast of oil particles reaching the shoreline after a 21,000-gallon pipeline rupture near Refugio State Beach on May 19, 2015. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created this dataset to investigate environmental impacts and determine restoration needs. This layer represents modeled oil particle trajectories for the affected California coastline.

Use Cases

• Modeling oil spill trajectory and shoreline contamination based on the described GNOME hindcast.
• Assessing environmental degradation for Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) based on the description of restoration needs.
• Analyzing coastal hazard management strategies based on the described pipeline rupture and spill event.

Strengths

• Modeled data from a specific, documented event: the May 19, 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill.
• Produced by the authoritative National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is a model hindcast; accuracy depends on the GNOME model's parameters and inputs.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

NOAA GNOME (General NOAA Operational Modeling Environment) modeled hindcast of oil particles.

Time Range

May 2015

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:23:01.324628; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Santa Barbara County, California, USA, near Refugio State Beach and the Pacific Ocean.