Two-way particle-tracking model for specifying sources of drifting objects: Application to the East China Sea shelf

The two-way Lagrangian particle-tracking model (PTM) is proposed for specifying sources of objects drifting with random-walk processes on the sea surface. First, to determine object source candidates, modelled particles are released from the point (hereafter, "receptor") where an observer finds the objects using a backward-in-time PTM with modeled ocean currents of which directions are reversed in sign. Second, the modeled particles are released from these source candidates in a forward-in-time PTM using ocean currents originally computed in hydrographic models. Third, the source candidates are considered to be reliable at a 5% significance level if the observed receptor is located inside the ellipse whose center is the mean position of the modeled particles at the time when the observer found the objects and whose axis length is twice the standard deviation computed using all modeled particle positions. The two-way PTM experiments are carried out in a realistic hydrographic model over the East China Sea shelf for the period from June through August 2004. Statistically significant sources are well specified close to the true source because 58%-90% of source candidates are rejected in the experiments.