On December 12, 1999, the Erika tanker broke in two sections at about 30 miles from the Brittany coast in the Bay of Biscay, France. The two parts of the wreck sank a few hours after the break. Some 15,000 tons of heavy fuel were released into the manne environment. It is the most serious discharge that has occurred in France since 1980 (Tanio, 6,000 tons). The nature of the incident, the kind and quantity of oil spilled, and the prevailing weather conditions posed considerable response problems. The spilled oil drifted for 2 weeks before reaching the coast. Three different models were implemented by CEntre de Documentation de Recherche et d'Experimentations sur les pollutions accidentelles des eaux (CEDRE) within a couple of hours of the Erika sinking. On December 14, it appeared that the forecast of the MOTHY model was closer to reality.The MOTHY model was developed by Meteo-France (the French national weather service) to simulate the movement of pollutants in three dimensions. MOTHY is an integrated system that includes hydrodynamic coastal ocean modeling and realtime atmospheric forcing from a global model. Pollutants can be oil or floating objects. CEDRE contributes to the improvement and validation of the model using both experiments and interventions during actual pollution events. New developments, exercises, and training are jointly conducted. In the event of marine pollution, Meteo-France sends meteorological forecasts and pollutant drift forecasts to CEDRE. This response system has been operational since February 1994.The MOTHY model was used routinely for several weeks after the ship broke up. The model predicted that the coastline was at risk and that the beaching of the main slick would occur after 2 weeks. Diffuse pollution reached the coastline 1 or 2 days before the main slicks, about 200 km west of the main beaching. Hindcast runs and backward integration of the model explained this unexpected arrival of oil. Some pollution was still arriving onshore several weeks after the initial release. This longer-term pollution came from the wrecks, but also of older pollution by the coastal detachment and deposit tides. Using the model in conjunction with remote sensing information allowed operators to develop and then execute a response strategy rather than react only to observed information.
Within a few decades, the European coasts and seas endured major environmental incidents of chemical pollution. For example, the “Ievoli Sun” incident, October 31, 2000, which was transporting 4,000 tonnes of styrene or the “Ece” incident, February 01, 2006 in the Channel, with a cargo of 10,000 tonnes of phosphoric acid. When a disaster occurs, authorities aspire to a faster and more effective management of pollution to limit the consequences. To this end, French authorities which take response measures for health or economic protection during a marine pollution incident need efficient software tools to assess the risks related to marine pollution. This allows them to quickly set up a relevant safety area, the aim being to protect the populations and the environment, to mobilize the appropriate response tools and to anticipate the situation in the short or medium term. It is in this particular and significant context of crisis management of marine pollution that the CLARA (“Calculation related to accidental releases in seawater”) project was developed. This project, funded by the French Research Ministry, has been carried out, since November 2003, by the Ecole des Mines d'Alès, Cedre, Ifremer, Mítío-France and Ineris, in order to jointly simulate
<p>The Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service (CMEMS) is a unique capability to provide daily state-of-the-art ocean analyses and forecasts. In the event of accidental marine pollution incidents, those products can help predict where slicks of pollutant and other substances spilled at sea will drift. For a given area, several products are generally available and it is sometimes difficult to know which is the most suitable for this type of use. The use of several CMEMS products during a major accident in the Bay of Biscay is presented here.</p><p>On March 12, 2019, the merchant ship Grande America sank at a depth of 4600 m, 350 km off the French coast, in the Bay of Biscay. It caused a spill of bunker oil and loss of containers. The MOTHY drift model was used daily during the aerial surveillance and recovery at sea period. It provided drift forecasts for oil slicks and containers up to 3 days in deterministic mode and up to 10 days in probabilistic mode. Long-term modelling of residual diffused pollution was also carried out, in particular to manage continuous leakage from the wreck. A technical committee of experts met daily to evaluate drift observations and forecasts. It focused on the best choices of available ocean models.</p><p>The operational ocean analysis and forecasting systems IBI (Iberian Biscay Irish) at 1/36 degree and Global Mercator at 1/12 degree were used. They led to significant differences in drift predictions, and only one of the two systems was retained after a few days of use. These differences are analysed in the light of available observations.</p><p>Drift forecasts did not indicate any oil arrival to the coast. This allowed the authorities to organize the response at sea without mobilizing resources ashore. No pollution was indeed observed on the coasts.</p>
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