Lardner, R.

In the Mediterranean sea the risk from oil spill pollution is high due to the heavy traffic of merchantvessels for transporting oil and gas, especially after the recent enlargement of the Suez canal and to theincreasing coastal and offshore installations related to the oil industry in general. The basic response tomajor oil spills includes different measures and equipment. However, in order to strengthen the mar-itime safety related to oil spill pollution in the Mediterranean and to assist the response agencies, amulti-model oil spill prediction service has been set up, known as MEDESS-4MS (Mediterranean DecisionSupport System for Marine Safety). The concept behind the MEDESS-4MS service is the integration of theexisting national ocean forecasting systems in the region with the Copernicus Marine EnvironmentalMonitoring Service (CMEMS) and their interconnection, through a dedicated network data repository,facilitating access to all these data and to the data from the oil spill monitoring platforms, including thesatellite data ones, with the well established oil spill models in the region. The MEDESS-4MS offer arange of service scenarios, multi-model data access and interactive capabilities to suite the needs ofREMPEC (Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre for the Mediterranean Sea) and EMSA-CSN (European Maritime Safety Agency-CleanseaNet).

The pan-European capacity for the Ocean Monitoring and Forecasting (MyOcean) Marine Core Service, implementing the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) objectives, targets the provision of ocean state observations from various platforms and analysis and forecasting products to assist, among other downscaling activities, the needs of the operational response to marine safety, particularly concerning oil spills. The MEDSLIK oil spill and trajectory prediction system makes use of the MyOcean regional and Cyprus Coastal Ocean Forecasting and Observing System (CYCOFOS) downscaled forecasting products for operational application in the Mediterranean and pre-operational use in the Black Sea. Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) satellite remote sensing images from the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Maritime Safety Agency CleanSeaNet (EMSA-CSN) provide the means for routine monitoring of the southern European seas for the detection of illegal oil discharges. MEDSLIK offers various ways, to be described in this paper, of coupling the MyOcean forecasting data with ASAR images to provide both forecasts and hindcasts for such remotely observed oil slicks. The main concern will be the drift of the oil slick and also, in the case of the forecast mode, its diffusive spreading, although some attempt is also made to estimate the changes in the state of the oil. The successful link of the satellite-detected oil slicks with their operational predictions using the MyOcean products contributes to the operational response chain and the strengthening of maritime safety for accidental or illegal spills, in implementation of the Mediterranean Decision Support System for Marine Safety (MEDESS-4MS) regarding oil spills.

MOON (Mediterranean Operational Oceanography Network http://www.moon-oceanforecasting.eu) provides near-real-time information on oil-spill detection (ocean color and SAR) and predictions [ocean forecasts (MFS and CYCOFOS) and oil-spill predictions (MEDSLIK)]. We employ this system to study the Lebanese oil-pollution crisis in summer 2006 and thus to assist regional and local decision makers in Europe, regionally and locally. The MEDSLIK oil-spill predictions obtained using CYCOFOS high-resolution ocean fields are compared with those obtained using lower-resolution MFS hydrodynamics, and both are validated against satellite observations. The predicted beached oil distributions along the Lebanese and Syrian coasts are compared with in situ observations. The oil-spill predictions are able to simulate the northward movement of the oil spill, with the CYCOFOS predictions being in better agreement with satellite observations. Among the free MEDSLIK parameters tested in the sensitivity experiments, the drift factor appears to be the most relevant to improve the quality of the results.

MOON (Mediterranean Operational Oceanography Network) is an operational distributed system ready to provide quality controlled and timely marine observations (in situ and satellite) and environmental analyses and predictions for management of oil spill accidents. MOON operational systems are based upon the real time functioning of an integrated system composed of the Real Time Observing system, the regional, sub-regional and coastal forecasting systems and a products dissemination system. All products and service of MOON are available at www.moon-oceanforecasting.eu. The observed data, the forecast and analysis products are available in real time to both an internal and external community of users. The latter is composed of governmental and military agencies, environmental protection agencies, research institutes and private companies. MOON community has been able to provide through the integrated satellite monitoring system and through MFS coupled with MEDSLIK Oil spill model timely information on the oil spill detection and evolution forecasting during several emergency cases, such as the Lebanon crisis (2006), the Gibraltar (2007) and Und Adryiatik (2008) accidents. During this oil pollution crisis MOON successfully assisted the decision makers in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean , such as REMPEC and Ministry of Lebanese Environment. The hydrodynamic model output from MFS has been coupled operationally with the 3D oil spill model MEDSLIK. This model is designed to predict the transport, fate and weathering of an oil spill. The MEDSLIK incorporates evaporation, emulsification, viscosity changes, dispersion in water column, adhesion to coast. In this work, the first examples of an oil spill monitoring and forecasting system, from detection to the dissemination results, will be shown and sensitivity experiments to model parameters will be compared with observations from buoy trajectories to real accidents.

In this work sensitivity experiments to the coupled MFS (currents) and MEDSLIK (oil spill) input parameters will be shown and results will be compared with observations. In these experiments the drift angle, the drift factor, the currents depth, the type of oil, horizontal diffusivity and the horizontal and temporal current resolution were changed.