Wednesday, 6 August 2003: 2:10 PM
Optimizing matching criteria for start time analysis of real-time “spot” forecasts and climatology for long range oil spill trajectory research
An initial study of long range oil spill modeling involved
random sampling of historic wind records to determine probable oil
trajectories. An approach is presented to isolate those portions of
climatology that pertain to the wind events during a given spill incident.
Previous research on extended trajectory analysis of oil spills focused on
selective matching of "spot" regional forecasts to seasonal climatology.
The matching start times are used in sampling historical wind data to
generate representative patterns for a long range oil spill model. This
paper extends that work, analyzing a set of time blocks following the data
matching start times. These time blocks are several days in duration and
are correlated (using wind speed and direction) with themselves and with
random chosen time blocks in climatology. The results of this correlation
analysis determines the validity of the initial matching criteria which can
then be optimized. Ideally, the matching criteria are optimized to obtain
an array of start times that better sample climatology, resulting in an
optimal long range oil spill trajectory. Various matching criteria are
analyzed and several different topographical regions are reviewed.
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