Evaluation of surface Lagrangian transport barriers in the Gulf of Trieste

The present work aims to detect Lagrangian transport barriers in the Gulf of Trieste by means of Lyapunov-exponent approach and tensorlines of the Cauchy-Green tensor. Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) are calculated employing 2D surface velocity fields measured by the coastal radars of the TOSCA EU research project (Tracking Oil Spills & Coastal Awareness Network). Moreover, surface drifters were deployed during the project. Comparisons between Eulerian velocity of HF-radar fields and Lagrangian velocity of drifters are carried out alongside single-particle tracking reliability. In particular, the possible influence of the data gaps in the HF-radar fields have been carefully considered. LCSs have proven to be robust against the quality of the starting HF-radar fields, leading to helpful insights in drifter positions. Indeed, after 24-hour integration the observed position of the drifter is approximately 1.5 km far from the nearest LCS, while a standard approach based on single-particle computations leads to larger errors (up to 5–7 km). However, such result must be properly interpreted taking into account the elongated nature of LCSs. A comparison between two common diagnostic tools of Lagrangian barriers is performed: Finite-Time and Finite-Size Lyapunov Exponent fields are compared in order to assess whether the patterns detected by the two measures are comparable. Finally, a joint analysis between LCSs and single-particle tracking is carried out and the results suggest that it would be desirable to couple these two approaches in real applications.