An analogue based forecasting system for Mediterranean marine litter concentration - Code and simulations dataset

This dataset contains the files and codes required to perform the computations described in "An analogue based forecasting system for Mediterranean marine litter concentration" by Gabriel Jordà and Javier Soto-Navarro, to be published in Ocean Science 2022

Summary

This dataset comprises the files and code necessary to implement a statistical forecasting system for marine litter (ML) concentration in the Mediterranean Sea based on the analogues method. The system uses a historical database of ML concentration simulated by a high resolution realistic model and is trained to identify meteorological situations in the past that are similar to the forecasted ones. Then, the corresponding ML concentrations of the past analog days are used to construct the ML concentration forecast. Due to the scarcity of observations, the forecasting system has been validated against a synthetic reality (i.e. the outputs from a ML modelling system). Different approaches can be tested to refine the system. The analysis of the results show that using integral definitions for the similarity function, based on the history of the meteorological situation, improves the system performance. The system accuracy depends on the region of application being better for larger regions. The method performs well to capture the spatial patterns but performs worse to capture the temporal variability, specially the extreme values. Despite the inherent limitations of using a synthetic reality to validate the system.

Dataset

The dataset is developed in Matlab format, and is comprised by:

• Matlab files with ML concentration maps derived from the dispersion simulations performed by Soto-Navarro et al. (2020). See the reference for a detailed description of the model and simulations.
• Matlab files with atmospheric fields from ERA5 dataset (sea level pressure (SLP) and wind speed (U₁₀, V_10. https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-reanalysis).
• Matlab files with the grid information for the different regions and sub-regions of the Mediterranean Sea analyzed.
• Matlab scripts needed for the implementation and running of the analogs based model.
• A document describing the implementation procedure.

References

Soto-Navarro, J., Jordà, G., Deudero, S., Alomar, C., Amores, Á., and Compa, M.: 3D hotspots of marine litter in the Mediterranean: A modeling study, Mar. Pollut. Bull., 155, 111159, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111159, 2020.