A high-resolution real-time forecasting system for predicting the fate of oil spills in the Strait of Bonifacio (western Mediterranean Sea)

Cucco, Andrea; Sinerchia, Matteo; Ribotti, Alberto; Olita, Antonio; Fazioli, Leopoldo; Perilli, Angelo; Sorgente, B.; Borghini, Mireno; Schröeder, Katrin; Sorgente, R.

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.03.019

Cited by 81 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We believe that higher prediction skills might be achieved with increased resolution initial/boundary conditions or two-way-nesting to resolve smaller spatial scales. Besides this, the results are still in agreement with the stateof-the-art literature, showing an average separation distance after 24 h of 8.64 km, in agreement with the results found in the literature (Cucco et al 2012;Huntley et al 2011;Liu and Weisberg 2011;Röhrs et al 2012), and the average skill score of 0.61.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…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%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A relocatable ocean model in support of environmental emergencies

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Drifters Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

A relocatable ocean model in support of environmental emergencies

et al. 2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Huntley et al (2011) indicated that the model trajectories separate from observations by roughly 15 km after the first day on average. Cucco et al (2012) mean separation distance is 4 km after 2 days.…”

Section: Verification Drifters and Satellite Datamentioning

confidence: 96%

“…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%

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

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

“…The SHYFEM3D-WWM is a coupled 3D hydrodynamic and wave model based on the finite element method (Umgiesser et al, 2004, Cucco et al, 2012. The wave module was adopted to reproduce the wind wave propagation in the study area, as directly influenced by the wind action, and the wave nonlinear interactions with the sea floor.…”

Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%