Investigation of the Heat Fluxes Effect on Oil Pollution Diffusion in the Persian Gulf Smaeyl Hassanzadeh and Omid Hajrasouliha Physics Department, Faculty of Sciences, University of Isfahan, Isfahan 81746, Iran Abstract. An Eulerian model is set up for Persian Gulf based on Coupled Hydrodynamical Ecological model for Regional Shelf Sea (COHERENS). The study area is the Persian Gulf, and the studied period is one year. Two experiments are designed to examine the impact of heat fluxes on the transport and diffusion of oil pollutions released within the surface layer. The aim of this study is to use a three dimensional hydrodynamic multi-purpose model coupled with contaminant modules, in order to simulate the diffusion of oil pollutions and found the effect of heat fluxes components on increase and/or decrease of pollution concentration, and its distribution. Analyze the results of numerical simulation indicate that, heat fluxes is important factor for pollutants diffusion in the north of the Gulf and also for decreasing pollutant concentration. Heat fluxes change more the tracer distribution of pollutant and have a similar contribution on pollutant concentration decrease rate; they cause to move pollution towards coast of Bahrain, Qatar and partly Saudi Arabian from initial position of release after one year. The results of this numerical simulation can be used in providing appropriate solutions to prevent oil from spreading further in the region. Keywords: Oil pollution, Heat fluxes, COHERENS, Persian gulf, Numerical simulation 1. Introduction Persian Gulf is located in the southwest Asia, an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, between 24 ° to 30 30 ° ′ N latitude and 47 ° to 56 25 ° ′ E longitude, with a maximum depth of 90 m and an average depth of 36 m (fig. 1). According to the report of Persian Gulf Studies Center in 2008; Persian Gulf with an area of 237473 km squares (measured by Hydrographic Office of Iranian Geographic Organization, 2007) is the third largest gulf of the world after Mexico and Hudson Gulfs. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between the gulf of Oman and the Persian gulf and has 54 km wide in the narrowest place of its. Most of the produced oil is transported by means of oil tankers with an annual estimate of 35,000 tankers crossing the Strait of Hormuz [1]. Through its waters, in giant ocean-going tankers, passes much of the oil from Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bordered by Iran, Oman's Musandam Peninsula and the United Arab Emirates, this stretch of water is of obvious military significance, The Persian Gulf and its coastal areas are the world's largest single source of crude oil and related industries dominate the region. An oil spill is a release of a liquid hydrocarbon into the environment, and is a form of pollution. Because of the importance of oil transportation in the Persian Gulf, possibility of pollutant diffusion in this region exists from various ways. An oil spill accident can cause serious problems to the ocean environment through its contamination. Therefore, a real-time prediction of oil spill transport is very essential for clean-up operations and to estimate the effect of physical processes such as wind, tide and heat fluxes on pollutant transport. The use of numerical modeling in oil spill incidents is a well-established technique that has proven to provide cost-effective and reasonable estimates of oil surface drift [2]. As for the other pollutants, oil is subject to advection and diffusion, as it is often less dense than water, much of the oil travels in a surface slick, which is affected by wind, waves and the surface current in the water [3]. In this study the movement of oil pollution and the influence of heat fluxes on it were simulated by a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model, COHERENS. That sure, the result, after analyzed, will noteworthy help us to protect the marine environment and do preventive actions in this field. In recent years, few researches have studied the pollutant diffusion in the Persian 2012 3rd International Conference on Biology, Environment and Chemistry IPCBEE vol.46 (2012) © (2012) IACSIT Press, Singapore DOI: 10.7763/IPCBEE. 2012. V46. 1 1