Parcels (Probably A Really Computationally Efficient Lagrangian Simulator) is a set of Python classes and methods to create customisable particle tracking simulations using output from Ocean Circulation models. Parcels can be used to track passive and active particulates such as water, plankton, plastic and fish.
Animation of virtual particles carried by ocean surface flow in the Agulhas Current off South Africa. The particles are advected with Parcels in data from the GlobCurrent Project.
The manuscript detailing the first release of Parcels, version 0.9, has been published in Geoscientific Model Development and can be cited as
Lange, M. and E van Sebille (2017) Parcels v0.9: prototyping a Lagrangian Ocean Analysis framework for the petascale age. Geoscientific Model Development, 10, 4175-4186. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2017-167
The manuscript detailing version 2.0 of Parcels is available at Geoscientific Model Development and can be cited as:
Delandmeter P. and E van Sebille (2019) The Parcels v2.0 Lagrangian framework: new field interpolation schemes. Geoscientific Model Development, 12, 3571-3584. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-3571-2019
See oceanparcels.org for further information about installing and running the Parcels code, as well as extended documentation of the methods and classes.