Modelling the transport pathways of floating marine litter in the North East Atlantic Ocean

Speaker: 
Achref Othmani (Ocean Modeling)
Seminar Date: 
6. October 2020 - 11:15 - 11:45
Location: 
Lecture room, Ground Floor, NERSC

This work is part of my research activities in my previous position performed in the framework of Clean Atlantic project.
As a result of human activities, marine litter has become a severe pollution threat with negative impacts on the marine environment and human health. Substantiated concerns have been raised regarding this issue and efforts have been made to mitigate its harmful effects.
Modelling the extent of marine pollution, sources, pathways and its accumulation zones would reinforce management actions, prevention and removal of surface litter from hotspots.
In this work, a Lagrangian modelling approach is presented to investigate the transport patterns for surface floating litter objects in the North East Atlantic Ocean.
The performance of the Lagrangian model was evaluated against observations, retrieved from two different types of satellite-tracked buoys (floating and submerged).
Future plans for work in the ocean modelling group at NERSC will be presented as well.