Journal of Marine Science and Engineering Article Inversion of the Degradation Coefficient of Petroleum Hydrocarbon Pollutants in Laizhou Bay Shengmao Huang 1,2, Haiwen Han 1,2, Xiuren Li 1,2, Dehai Song 1,2 , Wenqi Shi 3, Shufang Zhang 3,* and Xianqing Lv 1,2,* 1 Physical Oceanography Laboratory, Qingdao Collaborative Innovation Center of Marine Science and Technology (CIMST), Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China;
[email protected] (S.H.);
[email protected] (H.H.);
[email protected] (X.L.);
[email protected] (D.S.) 2 Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao 266100, China 3 National Marine Environment Monitoring Center, Dalian 116023, China;
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[email protected] (S.Z.);
[email protected] (X.L.) Abstract: When petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants enter the ocean, besides the migration under hydrodynamic constraints, their degradation due to environmental conditions also occurs. However, available observations are usually spatiotemporally disperse, which makes it difficult to study the degradation characteristics of pollutants. In this paper, a model of transport and degradation is used to estimate the degradation coefficient of petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants with the adjoint method. Firstly, the results of a comprehensive physical–chemical–biological test of the degradation of petroleum hydrocarbon pollutants in Laizhou Bay provide a reference for setting the degrada- tion coefficient on the time scale. In ideal twin experiments, the mean absolute errors between observations and simulation results obtain an obvious reduction, and the given distributions can be Citation: Huang, S.; Han, H.; Li, X.; inverted effectively, demonstrating the feasibility of the model.