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Supplementary material to “Tracking the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A Modeling Perspective”
8 February 2011
Yonggang Liu, Robert H. Weisberg, Chuanmin Hu, and Lianyuan Zheng, College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg
Citation:
Liu, Y., R. H. Weisberg, C. Hu, and L. Zheng (2011), Tracking the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: A modeling perspective, Eos Trans. AGU, 92(6), 45–46, doi:10.1029/2011EO060001. [Full Article (pdf)]
Six numerical ocean circulation models from different institutions were used for oil tracking. The WFS model has been developed and maintained in University of South Florida (USF), and it consists of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS; e.g., Haidvogel, et al. 2008) nested in the Global HYCOM. Both the Global HYCOM and the GOM HYCOM are maintained by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the HYCOM Consortium (http://www.hycom.org). The SABGOM, which also consists of ROMS nested in the Global HYCOM, has been developed and maintained in North Carolina State University. The RTOFS is based on HYCOM and operated by NOAA/NCEP. The IASNFS is based on Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) and developed in NRL. The USF WFS model is forced by NOAA/NCEP winds and heat fluxes (http://www.ncep.noaa.gov) modified by blending with observed winds and SST for improving the accuracy of the simulations [He et al. 2004]. The SABGOM is also forced by NOAA/NCEP winds and heat fluxes, and it relaxes to HYCOM. Both the Global HYCOM and GOM HYCOM are forced by Navy NOGAPS surface fluxes and include data assimilation. The RTOFS is also a data assimilative system (http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/ofs/). The IASNFS is operated at NRL with output served through the Northern Gulf Institute (http://www.northerngulfinstitute.org). All of these models have different model domains, resolutions, forcing functions, and in some cases data assimilation schemes.
A qualitative comparison of the predicted and the satellite-inferred oil slicks during the first two weeks of the oil spill is shown in Figure S1. Here, the WFS ROMS based trajectory model was chosen for demonstration purpose only. The trajectory model showed some success in predicting the oil locations in the next 2 – 3 days. However, improvements were needed, largely due to the limitations of the modeling system.
References:
Haidvogel, D.B., et al. (2008), Ocean forecasting in terrain-following coordinates: Formulation and skill assessment of the Regional Ocean Modeling System, J. Comput. Phys., 227, 3595–3624.
He, R., Y. Liu, and R.H. Weisberg (2004), Coastal ocean wind fields gauged against the performance of an ocean circulation model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L14303, doi:10.1029/2003GL019261.
Fig. S1. A qualitative comparison between model predicted (left) and satellite observed surface oil slicks (right) during the first two weeks of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Black denotes virtual drifters initially inferred from satellite imagery; purple denotes areas swept out by virtual drifters. Background fields are SST and currents.