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52 A. Ciappa, S. Costabile / Marine Pollution Bulletin 84 (2014) 44–55

Fig. 6 (continued)

Fig. 7. Panel a: kinetic energy (KE) of the mean current and wind in 2-, 6- and 10-day bins during 2008 in the study area. Panel b: the value plotted, proportional to the cosine
of the angle between the wind and the current, shows that for most of the year wind and current move the oil in the same direction.

to October as segment A, also deserves surveillance all year long The main results emerging from this study are summarized in
but is less frequented. Finally, the route segment C is the most fre- the following points. First, the use of realistic wind and current
quented but the threat to the MPA is limited to the months of fields commonly adopted in operational oil spill forecasting
November and December. systems in the last decade is mandatory in backward-in-time