Horizon Marine – Modeling Brazil Currents
Horizon Marine has initiated a Joint Industry Project (JIP) with two Eddy Watch – Trinidad/Venezuela clients and a modeling group at the of to develop a dynamic numerical model for predicting the migration of North Brazil Currents (NBC) rings towards .
NBC rings are energetic, deepwater oceanic features that carry 3.0+ knot currents and significantly interfere with offshore operations as they travel northwest along the coast from North Brazil to . Utilizing surface drifters and satellite remote sensing, Horizon Marine has successfully tracked the formation, separation, and migration of 46 powerful rings that have shed from the NBC for 15 different companies since September 2001.
Professor Avijit Gangopadhyay from The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) will be funded by the JIP to develop the forecast model. Dr. Gangopadhyay has experience in modeling large-scale ocean circulation in many of the world’s oceans, and his Oceanographic Modeling and Analysis Laboratory (OMAL) at SMAST is a leading developer of feature-oriented modeling technology. Simulating the circulation of an ocean basin through the synthesis of multi-scale, multi-disciplinary data sets from satellite and in-situ observational systems gives us great confidence that the feature-oriented approach to modeling NBC rings will produce a skillful forecast model in a two-year timeline.
has agreed to commit half of the estimated $200,000 to this effort, and the industry partners will split the remainder of the cost ($50,000 each) over two years. Each contributing company’s share will be returned to the JIP partners in the form of credits in future Eddy Watch invoices.
Horizon Marine, Inc. is an oceanographic services company specializing in operational marine data collection and analysis services, operating the Eddy Watch programs in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore Trinidad, and offshore .