Preliminary assessment of an oil-spill trajectory model using satellite-tracked, oil-spill-simulating drifters

Price, James; Reed, Mark; Howard, Matthew K.; Johnson, W. R.; Ji, Zhen‐Gang; Marshall, C. F.; Guinasso, Norman L.; Rainey, Gail

doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2004.04.025

Cited by 71 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Price et al (2006) found that separation distance between modeled and drifters trajectories is 78 km after 3 days, and 229 km after 20 days. RMSE over the integration time, estimated by Barron et al (2007), ranges from 10 to 25 km after 1 day and from 50 to 150 km after 7 days.…”

Section: Verification Drifters and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The papers of Reed et al (1994) and Al-Rabeh et al (2000) showed a qualitative comparison between drifting buoy trajectories and modeled trajectories. In more recent papers, quantitative metrics, based on the separation distance between modeled and observed trajectories, are presented (Price et al, 2006;Barron et al, 2007;Caballero et al, 2008;Sotillo et al, 2008;Huntley et al, 2011;Cucco et al, 2012). A skill score, based on separation distance normalized by the trajectory length, has been recently proposed by Liu and Weisberg (2011).…”

Section: Published By Copernicus Publications On Behalf Of the Europementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Drifters are commonly used to validate Lagrangian oil spill transport models (Reed et al, 1994;Al-Rabeh et al, 2000;Price et al, 2006;Caballero et al, 2008;Brostrom et al, 2008;Sotillo et al, 2008;Abascal et al, 2009;Zodiatis et al, 2010). In this work three different type of drifters will be used: modified CODE drifters (Davis, 1985), IESM-PTR drifters (CEDRE, 2004) and OSDs (Archetti, 2009).…”

Section: Verification Drifters and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model for short-term forecasting – Part 2: Numerical simulations and validations

et al. 2013

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Abstract. In this paper we use MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model described in Part 1 , to simulate oil slick transport and transformation processes for realistic oceanic cases, where satellite or drifting buoys data are available for verification. The model is coupled with operational oceanographic currents, atmospheric analyses winds and remote sensing data for initialization. The sensitivity of the oil spill simulations to several model parameterizations is analyzed and the results are validated using surface drifters, SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and optical satellite images in different regions of the Mediterranean Sea. It is found that the forecast skill of Lagrangian trajectories largely depends on the accuracy of the Eulerian ocean currents: the operational models give useful estimates of currents, but high-frequency (hourly) and high-spatial resolution is required, and the Stokes drift velocity has to be added, especially in coastal areas. From a numerical point of view, it is found that a realistic oil concentration reconstruction is obtained using an oil tracer grid resolution of about 100 m, with at least 100 000 Lagrangian particles. Moreover, sensitivity experiments to uncertain model parameters show that the knowledge of oil type and slick thickness are, among all the others, key model parameters affecting the simulation results. Considering acceptable for the simulated trajectories a maximum spatial error of the order of three times the horizontal resolution of the Eulerian ocean currents, the predictability skill for particle trajectories is from 1 to 2.5 days depending on the specific current regime. This suggests that re-initialization of the simulations is required every day.

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Section: Verification Drifters and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Published By Copernicus Publications On Behalf Of the Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Verification Drifters and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model for short-term forecasting – Part 2: Numerical simulations and validations

et al. 2013

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“…Oil spillfollowing surface drifters (i-SPHERE) (Price et al 2006) are 39.5 cm diameter spheres designed on the basis of earlier experiments carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s.…”

Section: Drifters Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The drifters are oceanographic instruments used to study the surface circulation and oceanographic dynamics; they are designed to be transported by ocean currents, and these characteristics make them useful tools for the validation of hydrodynamic models (Barron et al 2007;Huntley et al 2011;Liu and Weisberg 2011) and oil spill/trajectory models (Reed et al 1994;Al-Rabeh et al 2000;Price et al 2006;Caballero et al 2008;Sotillo et al 2008;Cucco et al 2012;Liu et al 2011c;Mariano et al 2011). Oil spillfollowing surface drifters (i-SPHERE) (Price et al 2006) are 39.5 cm diameter spheres designed on the basis of earlier experiments carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s.…”

Section: Drifters Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A relocatable ocean model in support of environmental emergencies

et al. 2014

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During the Costa Concordia emergency case, regional, subregional, and relocatable ocean models have been used together with the oil spill model, MEDSLIK-II, to provide ocean currents forecasts, possible oil spill scenarios, and drifters trajectories simulations. The models results together with the evaluation of their performances are presented in this paper. In particular, we focused this work on the implementation of the Interactive RElo- Concordia emergency and on its validation using drifters released in the area of the accident. It is shown that thanks to the capability of improving easily and quickly its configuration, the IRENOM results are of greater accuracy than the results achieved using regional or subregional model products. The model topography, the initialization procedures, and the horizontal resolution are the key model settings to be configured. Furthermore, the IRENOM currents and the MEDSLIK-II simulated trajectories showed to be sensitive to the spatial resolution of the meteorological fields used, providing higher prediction skills with higher resolution wind forcing.

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Evaluation of altimetry-derived surface current products using Lagrangian drifter trajectories in the eastern Gulf of Mexico

Liu

Weisberg

Vignudelli

et al. 2014

J. Geophys. Res. Oceans

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Lagrangian particle trajectory models based on several altimetry-derived surface current products are used to hindcast the drifter trajectories observed in the eastern Gulf of Mexico during May to August 2010 (the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident). The performances of the trajectory models are gauged in terms of Lagrangian separation distances (d) and a nondimensional skill score (s), respectively. A series of numerical experiments show that these altimetry-based trajectory models have about the same performance, with a certain improvement by adding surface wind Ekman components, especially over the shelf region. However, their hindcast skills are slightly better than those of the data assimilative numerical model output. After 3 days' simulation the altimetry-based trajectory models have mean d values of 75-83 and 34-42 km (s values of 0.49-0.51 and 0.35-0.43) in the Gulf of Mexico deep water area and on the West Florida Continental Shelf, respectively. These satellite altimetry data products are useful for providing essential information on ocean surface currents of use in water property transports, offshore oil and gas operations, hazardous spill mitigation, search and rescue, etc.

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Preliminary assessment of an oil-spill trajectory model using satellite-tracked, oil-spill-simulating drifters

Cited by 71 publications

References 12 publications

MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model for short-term forecasting – Part 2: Numerical simulations and validations

MEDSLIK-II, a Lagrangian marine surface oil spill model for short-term forecasting – Part 2: Numerical simulations and validations

A relocatable ocean model in support of environmental emergencies

Evaluation of altimetry-derived surface current products using Lagrangian drifter trajectories in the eastern Gulf of Mexico

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