The Circulation and Oil-Spill-Trajectory Model is a cornerstone to regional EIS's, environmental assessments, and oil-spill-contingency planning.  Oil0spill issues involving or resolvable by the trajectory model constitute half the public comments submitted on EIS's on proposed offshore oil and gas sales in the Alaska OCS Region.  The MSM is currently using an Arctic basin model with 20-ikm grid spacing to project oil spill trajectories within 10-km of land for ongoing developmental Environmental Impact Statements.  The model does not include the developmental Environmental Impact

This study will build on the recommendations and results from multi-year simulations of Arctic circulation in an FY 1996-2000 study, recently completed CMI Arctic 2-D and 1.5-D modeling experiments, and additional Chukchi and Beaufort Sea circulation data derived from ongoing CMI and international Arctic oceanographic studies.  The current models do not resolve the coastal barrier islands in the Beaufort Sea, where oil development is occurring.

The objective of this study is to obtain a finer resolution model to simulate circulation in the nearshore Beaufort Sea, with emphasis on the coastal waters <40 m deep between Harrison Bay and Camden Bay.  The model will be designed to provide the information needed to run the MMS oil spill trajectory model and will also provide surface circulation fields that can be used to drive the MMS COZOIL model.

1. Develop Nested the Princeton Ocean Model coupled with Hibler ice model in a larger Ice-ocean circulation model (CIOM), a 3-dimensional (wind, ice, ocean) model.
2. Feed the CIOM information to this finer grid model.
3. Assimilate the observational data into the model—particularly recent circulation, winds, and finer-scale ice data.
4. Provide simulated wind, current, and ice velocity fields on tape.
 

Modeling effort was reviewed by MMS Modeling Review Board in 2004. The draft final report is under review by MMS and Coastal Marine Institute.