State Estimates of the Northern Philippine Sea Circulation Including Ocean Acoustic Travel Times

Bruce D Cornuelle1, Ganesh Gopalakrishnan2, Matthew R Mazloff1, Peter F. Worcester1 and Matthew A Dzieciuch1, (1)University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States, (2)University of California San Diego, SIO, La Jolla, CA, United States
Abstract:
The North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory (NPAL) Philippine Sea experiment deployed a variety of instruments in the northern Philippine Sea during April 2010 through April 2011, including 6 acoustic transceivers for reciprocal measurements of travel times between instruments. Five of the transceivers were moored in a pentagon approximately 660 km in diameter with the sixth transceiver mooring in the center. A seventh mooring approximately 130 km northwest of the center supported a Distributed Vertical Line Array (DVLA) which carried 149 acoustic receivers with thermistors covering the depths between 200 m and 5500 m. The goals of the experiment included studying the energetic westward-propagating eddies which travel through the region, their effect on underwater sound propagation, and the impact of acoustic measurements on estimates of the time-evolving ocean state.

Observed travel-time time series were compared with travel times computed from ocean state estimates made using an eddy-active regional implementation of the MITgcm that were constrained by satellite sea surface height and sea surface temperature observations and by temperature and salinity profiles from Argo, CTDs, and XBTs but not by the acoustic data. The similarities cross-validate the state estimates, while the differences provide a simple estimate of the novel information present in the travel times.

The ocean state estimates were then re-computed to fit the acoustic travel times as integrals of the sound speed, and therefore temperature and salinity, along the ray paths. Over the approximately 1 year experiment, the state estimate was able to match the travel times within their error bars and did not significantly increase the misfits with the other observations. Comparisons of the state estimates with and without the travel-time data showed significant changes to the temperature and salinity were made to fit the acoustic observations. The state estimates using the acoustic data compare favorably with independent observations, including in forecasts.

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