Random drift of an idealized oil patch

Operational protocol for the sighting and tracking of Portuguese man-of-war in the southeastern Bay of Biscay: Observations and modeling

“…In this model, the surface current velocity would be estimated as a percentage of the wind velocity. For surface drifters such as the tags analyzed here, this percentage is lower than the typical 3% value used in the drift of oil spills (Fallah and Stark, 1976;Wu, 1983). On average, 1.8% of the wind velocity is an optimal value that agrees with those obtained by Abascal et al (2009Abascal et al ( , 2012 with surface drifting buoys.…”

“…In the operational system, C ROMS and C WRF are equal to 1 and 0.03, respectively. This C WRF value is commonly applied in the surface drift of oil spills (Fallah and Stark, 1976;Wu, 1983). However, these coefficients must be estimated for each specific floating object.…”