Fig. 1. Prestige course. The solid line shows the trajectory of the ship from November 13th to 19th. Time in UTC.

Fig. 2. Comparison of ARPS output wind data for the nearest grid point against data from automatic meteorological station at Corrubedo.

Fig. 3. (a) November 17, 2002—ASAR-ENVISAT ESA Satellite image showing the wake of fuel oil, (b) METEOMOHID simulation of the track of the first spill on November 17th, 2002 at 12h00 UTC, the Prestige course: barotropic conditions, tracers are released at surface. Compare with (a).

Fig. 4. Tracers are released at different depths: surface tracers (red), 1 m depth tracers (green). Surface tracers are directly pulled by wind with a velocity proportional to the wind velocity in a percentage of (b) 1.5%, (c) 2.5%, (d) 3.3%. Results are compared with ENVISAT satellite image (a) taked on November 17th. (For interpretation of the references in colour in figure legends, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 5. METEOMOHID simulation of the main spill track. Comparison of the forecasted position (coloured spots) with overflight observed position (black circles).

Fig. 6. METEOMOHID simulation of the main spill track taking into account the slope current. Oil displacement was computed adding to the barotropic currents the baroclinic ones obtained with November climatologic temperature, salinity fields. Red lagrangian tracers indicate surface tracers, green ones represent 0.5 m depth tracers and the grey ones are tracers at 1 m depth.

Ship positions reported by Le Cedre

These positions have been used to fix the moving origin of the tracers.