NOAA model extended to use nowcast/forecast currents

Abstract

GNOME (General NOM Oil Modeling Environment) is a publicly available oil spill trajectory model used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hazardous Materials Response Division (HAZMAT) for oil spill response. In order to leverage work being done within and outside NOAA to develop detailed circulation models, GNOME has been extended to accept currents in a number of formats (ASCII, netCDF) from different types of models (time dependent triangular, rectangular, or curvilinear grids). In particular, HAZMAT is interested in connections with nowcast/forecast models. Tlie NOAA Live Access Server (LAS), using the Unidata Distributed Oceanographic Data System (DODS), has been extended to support several nowcast/forecast models in the U.S. DODS provides the tools to make local data accessible to the outside through the Internet, regardless of internal format. LAS is a highly configurable server that allows on-the-fly graphics for data visualization, custom subsetting, and different output formats (from files to graphics). Providers of nowcast/forecast data need only set up a DODS server at their site for their data to be available to LAS. Once LAS is made aware of the new data, HAZMAT responders have 24-hour access to model generated fields. With the GNOME/LAS/DODS combination, other circulation models can be used to quickly create new spill trajectory forecasts.