Strategies for simulating the drift of marine debris

Modelling the drift of marine debris in quasi-real time can be of societal relevance. One pertinent example is Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The aircraft is assumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, leaving floating wreckage to drift on the surface. Some of these items were recovered around the western Indian Ocean. We use ocean currents simulated by an operational ocean model in conjunction with surface Stokes drift to determine the possible paths taken by the debris. We consider: (1) How important is the influence of surface waves on the drift? (2) What are the relative benefits of forward- and backward-tracking in time? (3) Does including information from more items refine the most probable crash-site region? Our results highlight a critical contribution of Stokes drift and emphasise the need to know precisely the buoyancy characteristics of the items. The differences between the tracking approaches provide a measure of uncertainty which can be minimised by simulating a sufficiently large number of virtual debris. Given the uncertainties associated with the timings of the debris sightings, we show that at least 5 items are required to achieve an optimal most probable crash-site region. The results have implications for other drift simulation applications

In search for the sources of plastic marine litter that contaminates the Easter Island Ecoregion

Subtropical gyres are the oceanic regions where plastic litter accumulates over long timescales, exposing surrounding oceanic islands to plastic contamination, with potentially severe consequences on marine life. Islands’ exposure to such contaminants, littered over long distances in marine or terrestrial habitats, is due to the ocean currents that can transport plastic over long ranges. Here, this issue is addressed for the Easter Island ecoregion (EIE). High-resolution ocean circulation models are used with a Lagrangian particle-tracking tool to identify the connectivity patterns of the EIE with industrial fishing areas and coastline regions of the Pacific basin. Connectivity patterns for “virtual” particles either floating (such as buoyant macroplastics) or neutrally-buoyant (smaller microplastics) are investigated. We find that the South American shoreline between 20°S and 40°S, and the fishing zone within international waters off Peru (20°S, 80°W) are associated with the highest probability for debris to reach the EIE, with transit times under 2 years. These regions coincide with the most-densely populated coastal region of Chile and the most-intensely fished region in the South Pacific. The findings offer potential for mitigating plastic contamination reaching the EIE through better upstream waste management. Results also highlight the need for international action plans on this important issue

The added value of the multi-system spread information for ocean heat content and steric sea level investigations in the CMEMS GREP ensemble reanalysis product

Since 2016, the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) has produced and disseminated an ensemble of four global ocean reanalyses produced at eddy-permitting resolution for the period from 1993 to present, called GREP (Global ocean Reanalysis Ensemble Product). This dataset offers the possibility to investigate the potential benefits of a multi-system approach for ocean reanalyses, since the four reanalyses span by construction the same spatial and temporal scales. In particular, our investigations focus on the added value of the information on the ensemble spread, implicitly contained in the GREP ensemble, for temperature, salinity, and steric sea level studies. It is shown that in spite of the small ensemble size, the spread is capable of estimating the flow-dependent uncertainty in the ensemble mean, although proper re-scaling is needed to achieve reliability. The GREP members also exhibit larger consistency (smaller spread) than their predecessors, suggesting advancement with time of the reanalysis vintage. The uncertainty information is crucial for monitoring the climate of the ocean, even at regional level, as GREP shows consistency with CMEMS high-resolution regional products and complement the regional estimates with uncertainty estimates. Further applications of the spread include the monitoring of the impact of changes in ocean observing networks; the use of multi-model ensemble anomalies in hybrid ensemble-variational retrospective analysis systems, which outperform static covariances and represent a promising application of GREP. Overall, the spread information of the GREP product is found to significantly contribute to the crucial requirement of uncertainty estimates for climatic datasets.Data from the reanalyses presented in this work are available from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://marine.copernicus.eu/). Part of this work was supported by the EOS COST Action (“Evaluation of Ocean Synthesis”, http://eos-cost.eu/) through its Short Term Scientific Missions program. The full C-GLORS dataset is available at http://c-glors.cmcc.it. This work has received funding from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS).Published287-3124A. Oceanografia e climaJCR Journa

Strategies for simulating the drift of marine debris

Modelling the drift of marine debris in quasi-real time can be of societal relevance. One pertinent example is Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The aircraft is assumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, leaving floating wreckage to drift on the surface. Some of these items were recovered around the western Indian Ocean. We use ocean currents simulated by an operational ocean model in conjunction with surface Stokes drift to determine the possible paths taken by the debris. We consider: (1) How important is the influence of surface waves on the drift? (2) What are the relative benefits of forward- and backward-tracking in time? (3) Does including information from more items refine the most probable crash-site region? Our results highlight a critical contribution of Stokes drift and emphasise the need to know precisely the buoyancy characteristics of the items. The differences between the tracking approaches provide a measure of uncertainty which can be minimised by simulating a sufficiently large number of virtual debris. Given the uncertainties associated with the timings of the debris sightings, we show that at least 5 items are required to achieve an optimal most probable crash-site region. The results have implications for other drift simulation applications

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service Ocean State Report

The Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS) Ocean State Report (OSR) provides an annual report of the state of the global ocean and European regional seas for policy and decision-makers with the additional aim of increasing general public awareness about the status of, and changes in, the marine environment. The CMEMS OSR draws on expert analysis and provides a 3-D view (through reanalysis systems), a view from above (through remote-sensing data) and a direct view of the interior (through in situ measurements) of the global ocean and the European regional seas. The report is based on the unique CMEMS monitoring capabilities of the blue (hydrography, currents), white (sea ice) and green (e.g. Chlorophyll) marine environment. This first issue of the CMEMS OSR provides guidance on Essential Variables, large-scale changes and specific events related to the physical ocean state over the period 1993–2015. Principal findings of this first CMEMS OSR show a significant increase in global and regional sea levels, thermosteric expansion, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature and Antarctic sea ice extent and conversely a decrease in Arctic sea ice extent during the 1993–2015 period. During the year 2015 exceptionally strong large-scale changes were monitored such as, for example, a strong El Niño Southern Oscillation, a high frequency of extreme storms and sea level events in specific regions in addition to areas of high sea level and harmful algae blooms. At the same time, some areas in the Arctic Ocean experienced exceptionally low sea ice extent and temperatures below average were observed in the North Atlantic Ocean

Sensitivity of advective transfer times across the North Atlantic Ocean to the temporal and spatial resolution of model velocity data: Implication for European eel larval transport

International audienceEuropean eel (Anguilla anguilla) larvae achieve one of the longest larval migrations of the marine realm, i.e., more than 6000 km from their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea to European continental shelves. The duration of this migration remains debated, between 7 months and 3 years. This information is, however, crucial since it determines the period over which larvae are affected by environmental conditions and hence the subsequent recruitment success. We investigate the pathways and duration of trans-Atlantic connections using 3 years of high-resolution (daily, 1/12°) velocity fields available from a Mercator-Océan model configuration without data assimilation. We study specifically the effect of spatial and temporal resolutions on our estimates by applying various filters in time (from daily to 12-day averages) and space (from 1/12° to 1° gridcell aggregation) to the nominal model outputs. Numerical particles are released in the presumed European eel spawning area and considered as passive tracers at three specific depths (around 0, 50, and 200 m). We diagnose particularly the intensity of the water transfer between suitable control sections that encompass the eel larva distribution. Transit ages are also investigated, with a particular focus on the pathways that minimize the connection times between the western and eastern North Atlantic. We show that small-scale structures (eddies and filaments) contribute to faster connections though they also correspond to additional complexity in trajectories. The shortest pathways mostly follow the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Drift, whereas interior connections require longer transfers that prove less compatible with biological observations