Coastal currents from observations

At present, different current measurements are not integrated in common data streams. The spatial and temporal coverage of such datasets are quite varied. New current data products based on those measurements need to be generated to improve the coverage and accuracy of the combined datasets.

Blue-Cloud 2026 works on the provision of an innovative service that generates integrated ocean surface current maps from High Frequency (HF) radar, drifter data and geostrophic currents from satellite altimetry data using the DIVAnd (Data Interpolating Variational Analysis in n dimensions) method. 

The workflow is based on the open-source code DIVAnd. This methodology helps to integrate radial and total currents .The method will be made available as a series of Jupyter notebooks corresponding to the different steps. As an application of the surface currents, the derived product will be used to initialise the oil spill forecasting model (MEDSLIK-II) described in Liubartseva et al. (2016) to simulate the dispersion of an oil spill accident.