Accurate Sound Velocity Measurement in Ocean Near-Surface Layer

Abstract:

Accurate sound velocity measurement is essential in oceanography because sound is the only wave that can propagate in sea water. Due to its measuring difficulties, sound velocity is often not measured directly but instead calculated from water temperature, salinity, and depth, which are much easier to obtain. This research develops a new method to directly measure the sound velocity in the ocean’s near-surface layer using multi-channel seismic (MCS) hydrophones. This system consists of a device to make a sound pulse and a long cable with hundreds of hydrophones to record the sound. The distance between the source and each receiver is the offset. The time it takes the pulse to arrive to each receiver is the travel time.

The errors of measuring offset and travel time will affect the accuracy of sound velocity if we calculated with just one offset and one travel time. However, by analyzing the direct arrival signal from hundreds of receivers, the velocity can be determined as the slope of a straight line in the travel time-offset graph. The errors in distance and time measurement result in only an up or down shift of the line and do not affect the slope.

This research uses MCS data of survey MGL1408 obtained from the Marine Geoscience Data System and processed with Seismic Unix. The sound velocity can be directly measured to an accuracy of less than 1m/s. The included graph shows the directly measured velocity verses the calculated velocity along 100km across the Mid-Atlantic continental margin. The directly measured velocity shows a good coherence to the velocity computed from temperature and salinity. In addition, the fine variations in the sound velocity can be observed, which is hardly seen from the calculated velocity. Using this methodology, both large area acquisition and fine resolution can be achieved. This directly measured sound velocity will be a new and powerful tool in oceanography.