An Open-Source Software Application for Drifter Trajectory Prediction in the Mid-Atlantic Bight

There are several different types of floatables in the ocean. Some of these floating particles or drifters are of high value to people and are worth using resources to track and recover, such as people, boats, or equipment. To recover a drifting particle, the rescue party would need to have some information on where the particle may be located and where it may be headed. Lots of effort in the oceanography world in recent years has gone into providing the kind of data that is invaluable for such a task. There are many ocean and atmospheric models well suited to specific regions, as well as oceanography equipment reporting data that are translated and recorded in a format people can use. Several of these data are now freely available online, and easy to access. We test HF Radar and the regional ocean model Doppio to track a surface drifter and a glider in distress using the particle tracking framework OpenDrift. We found that HFR and Doppio do have some differences in trajectories but mostly agree in the 48-hour simulations. The tools used in this analysis are open source, and a collection of scripts is being made available for interested parties.