On the modeling of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Mariano, Arthur J.; Kourafalou, Vassiliki H.; Srinivasan, Ashwanth; Kang, Hee-Sook; Halliwell, George R.; Ryan, Edward H.; Roffer, Mitchell A.

doi:10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2011.06.001

Cited by 150 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…This new metric has already been used by Röhrs et al (2012) and Ivichev et al (2012) to evaluate their model performances. Oil spill models' forecasting accuracy can be also evaluated by comparing the model results to remote sensing observations (Carracedo et al, 2006;Coppini et al, 2011;Berry et al, 2012;Mariano et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2011c), although it is difficult to have oil slick time series for long periods after the first observation, due to the long revisit time for satellites. Between those studies, the pioneering study of Reed et al (1994) combined the drifters and remote sensing observations with chemical samplings.…”

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

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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: 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

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“…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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“…Simulations that attempted to reproduce the long-time fate of oil coming from the Deep-Water Horizon accident yielded very tentative outcomes (see [1][2][3], and references contained therein). In addition to incomplete complex multi-physics (an atmospheric boundary layer, surface oil, oil at depth, ocean and nearshore dynamics, biogenic dynamics), a further challenge was the sheer spatio-temporal bandwidth required to produce simulations of adequate resolution; from meters to hundreds of kilometers, from tens of seconds, to seasons and years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Oil Fate Model for Shallow-Waters

Restrepo

Ramı́rez

Venkataramani

2015

JMSE

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We introduce a model for the dynamics of oil in suspension, appropriate for shallow waters, including the nearshore environment. This model is capable of oil mass conservation and does so by evolving the oil on the sea surface as well as the oil in the subsurface. The shallower portion of the continental shelf poses compounding unique modeling challenges. Many of these relate to the complex nature of advection and dispersion of oil in an environment in which wind, waves, as well as currents all play a role, as does the complex bathymetry and the nearshore geography. In this study we present an overview of the model as well as derive the most fundamental of processes, namely, the shallow water advectiion and dispersion processes. With regard to this basic transport, we superate several fundamental challenges associated with creating a transport model for oil and other buoyant pollutants, capable of capturing the dynamics at the large spatio-temporal scales demanded by environmental and hazard mitigation studies. Some of the strategies are related to dimension reduction and upscaling, and leave discussion of these to companion papers. Here we focus on wave-filtering, ensemble and depth-averaging. Integral to the model is the proposal of an ocean dynamics model that is consistent with the transport. This ocean J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2015, 3 1505 dynamics model is detailed here. The ocean/oil transport model is applied to a couple of physically-inspired oil-spill problems in demonstrate its specialized capabilities.

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On the modeling of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Cited by 150 publications

References 22 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

An Oil Fate Model for Shallow-Waters

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