This workshop was part of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative’s Synthesis and Legacy Effort that is documenting and exploiting new scientific advances resulting from this 10 year research program that followed the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident.

The panel presentation focused on each stakeholder’s organizational modeling needs, cross discipline model application, baseline and data needs, and reflections on contributions of the research initiative. The OR&R representatives joined other stakeholders from EPA, ExxonMobil, Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Florida Sea Grant oil spill science specialist facilitator.

Scott and Lisa spoke to the modeling capabilities and uses within OR&R, including the GNOME Suite used for operational modeling, and the range of models and studies that may be used to meet the needs of Natural Resource Damage Assessment. Constraints within these domains were also described. For response, the speed and flexibility of a model is important to OR&R’s trajectory analysis work, given the wide range of locations and spill scenarios. This operational modeling is the topic of a separate GoMRI Synthesis and Legacy group focused on operational oil spill modeling. Based on the needs of the situation, Natural Resource Damage Assessment may apply models and studies to ensure documentation of natural resource injury to support restoration.

Scott also relayed awareness of larger NOAA unified modeling initiatives to enhance the skill of NOAA’s numerical weather prediction. The agency is developing common modeling infrastructure to advance government, academic, and private cooperation. This initiative will not only improve physical models for ingestion into oil transport and fate models, but is also an area for GoMRI and the Modeling for Synthesis group to monitor as further work is done on the cross-discipline oil spill conceptual model system and its components.

For further information, contact Scott.Lundgren@noaa.gov or Lisa.DiPinto@noaa.gov.

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