The Need for Operational Forecasting During Oil Spill Response

The sensitivity of model simulations to wind data and model grid scale is discussed and a methodology for the reception of real-time UK Meteorological Office wind forecasts described. The Sea Empress incident which occurred off west Wales during 1996 is used to illustrate the techniques, and suggestions are made for the improvement of the national response to major spills. There is a need for Meteorological Office forecasts to be more readily available to the scientific community and for fine grid hydrodynamic models to be developed for regions considered to be at risk. There should be a shift in the focus of spill modelling towards real-time forecasting and away from the present emphasis on simplistic hindcasting studies. There is a need for a central forecasting service, run according to UK Meteorological Office protocols, to provide state-of-the-art forecasting at the time of a major spill. It is likely that there will continue to be a requirement for PC and workstation-based model simulations for both scientific and operational studies.