Regional Seafloor Topography by Extended Kalman Filtering of Marine Gravity Data without Ship-Track Information

An iterative Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) approach is proposed to recover a regional set of topographic heights composing an undersea volcanic mount by the successive combination of large numbers of gravity measurements at sea surface using altimetry satellite-derived grids and taking the error uncertainties into account. The integration of the non-linear Newtonian operators versus the radial and angular distances (and its first derivatives) enables the estimation process to accelerate and requires only few iterations, instead of summing Legendre polynomial series or using noise-degraded 2D-FFT decomposition. To show the effectiveness of the EKF approach, we apply it to the real case of the bathymetry around the Great Meteor seamount in the Atlantic Ocean by combining only geoid height/free-air anomaly datasets and using ship-track soundings as reference for validation. Topography of the Great Meteor seamounts structures are well-reconstructed, especially when regional compensation is considered. Best solution gives a RMS equal to 400 m with respect to the single beam depth observations and it is comparable to RMS obtained for ETOPO1 of about 365 m. Larger discrepancies are located in the seamount flanks due to missing high-resolution information for gradients. This approach can improve the knowledge of seafloor topography in regions where few echo-sounder measurements are available.

Comparison of Marine Gravity Measurements from Shipborne and Satellite Altimetry in the Arctic Ocean

To understand the influence of sea ice on shipborne gravity measurements and the accuracy of the satellite-altimetry-derived gravity field in the Arctic Ocean, we compared shipborne gravity measurements with those obtained from satellite altimetric gravity measurements. The influence of sea ice on the shipborne gravity measurements was mainly concentrated in the 0–6 km wavelength range, and the standard deviation of the noise amplitudes was 2.62 mGal. Compared to ice-free regions, the accuracies in the region with floating ice were reduced by 13% for DTU21 and 6% for SV31. Due to the influence of sea ice, satellite altimetric gravity data lose significant information in the 9–12 km wavelength range. The coherence curve of the shipborne gravity with bathymetry was nearly the same as that of the satellite altimetric gravity. The satellite data contain nearly all of the significant information that is present in the shipborne data. The differences between the shipborne and satellite gravity data are small and can be used to study the crustal structure of the Arctic.

Stratigraphic and sedimentological characterisation of the Late Cretaceous post-rift intra Lange Sandstones of the Gimsan Basin and Grinda Graben (Halten Terrace, Norwegian Sea)

Deep-marine gravity-driven deposits represent one of the more investigated depositional systems due to their potential interest as target for exploration and carbon capture and storage activities, as well as an important record of the depositional history of a basin through time. Although the Halten Terrace (Norwegian Sea) is one of the main successful exploration areas, we still have poor understanding of the post-rift Cretaceous interval. Here, 3D seismic reflection and borehole data are integrated to investigate the stratigraphic distribution and sedimentological characteristics of the Cenomanian-Turonian intra Lange Sandstones in the Gimsan Basin and Grinda Graben. The Lange Formation records the deposition in a deep-marine environment of a thousand meter thick shale unit punctuated by tens of meters thick gravity-driven coarse-grained sandstone intervals sourced from the Norwegian mainland. The presence of gravity-driven deposits and the deep-marine setting is supported by seismic interpretation, architectural elements and the facies analysis of cored material acquired within the studied stratigraphic interval. Borehole data indicate the presence of both turbidites and hybrid-event beds rich in mud content. The results of this study have implications for the understanding of the distribution and reservoir potentiality of the Late Cretaceous Lange Formation in the Halten Terrace.

Evaluation of Marine Gravity Anomaly Calculation Accuracy by Multi-Source Satellite Altimetry Data

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of satellite altimetry data accuracy on the marine gravity anomaly accuracy. The data of 12 altimetry satellites in the research area (5°N–23°N, 105°E–118°E) were selected. These data were classified into three groups: A, B, and C, according to the track density, the accuracy of the altimetry satellites, and the differences of self-crossover. Group A contains CryoSat-2, group B includes Geosat, ERS-1, ERS-2, and Envisat, and group C comprises T/P, Jason-1/2/3, HY-2A, SARAL, and Sentinel-3A. In Experiment I, the 5′×5′ marine gravity anomalies were obtained based on the data of groups A, B, and C, respectively. Compared with the shipborne gravity data, the root mean square error (RMSE) of groups A, B, and C was 4.59 mGal, 4.61 mGal, and 4.51 mGal, respectively. The results show that high-precision satellite altimetry data can improve the calculation accuracy of gravity anomaly, and the single satellite CryoSat-2 enables achieving the same effect of multi-satellite joint processing. In Experiment II, the 2′×2′ marine gravity anomalies were acquired based on the data of groups A, A + B, and A + C, respectively. The root mean square error of the above three groups was, respectively, 4.29 mGal, 4.30 mGal, and 4.21 mGal, and the outcomes show that when the spatial resolution is satisfied, adding redundant low-precision altimetry data will add pressure to the calculation of marine gravity anomalies and will not improve the accuracy. An effective combination of multi-satellite data can improve the accuracy and spatial resolution of the marine gravity anomaly inversion.

Accuracy Evaluation of Altimeter-Derived Gravity Field Models in Offshore and Coastal Regions of China

Satellite radar altimetry has made unique contributions to global and coastal gravity field recovery. This paper starts with a general introduction followed by the progress of satellite radar altimetry technology. Then, the methods of marine gravity field recovery and dominating gravity models are described briefly. Finally, typical gravity models are compared with shipboard gravity measurements to evaluate their accuracies in offshore and coastal regions of China. The root mean squares of deviations between gravity models and shipboard gravity are all more than 7 mGal in offshore regions and within the range of 9.5–10.2 mGal in coastal regions. Further analysis in coastal regions indicates that the new gravity models with new satellite missions including Jason-2, SARAL/Altika, and Envisat data have relatively higher accuracy, especially SARAL/Altika data, significantly improving the coastal gravity field. Accuracies are low in areas with strong currents, showing that tide correction is very important for altimetry-derived marine gravity recovery as well as shipboard measurements in coastal gravity field determination. Moreover, as an external check, shipboard gravity data need more operations to improve their precision, such as higher instrument accuracy and finer data processing.

Recovering Marine Gravity Over the Gulf of Guinea From Multi-Satellite Sea Surface Heights

A regional gravity field product, comprising vertical deflections and gravity anomalies, of the Gulf of Guinea (15°W to 5°E, 4°S to 4°N) has been developed from sea surface heights (SSH) of five altimetry missions. Though the remove-restore technique was adopted, the deflections of the vertical were computed directly from the SSH without the influence of a global geopotential model. The north-component of vertical deflections was more accurate than the east-component by almost three times. Analysis of results showed each satellite can contribute almost equally in resolving the north-component. This is attributable to the nearly northern inclinations of the various satellites. However, Cryosat-2, Jason-1/GM, and SARAL/AltiKa contributed the most in resolving the east-component. We attribute this to the superior spatial resolution of Cryosat-2, the lower inclination of Jason-1/GM, and the high range accuracy of the Ka-band of SARAL/AltiKa. Weights of 0.687 and 0.313 were, respectively, assigned to the north and east components in order to minimize their non-uniform accuracy effect on the resultant gravity anomaly model. Histogram of computed gravity anomalies compared well with those from renowned models: DTU13, SIOv28, and EGM2008. It averagely deviates from the reference models by −0.33 mGal. Further assessment was done by comparing it with a quadratically adjusted shipborne free-air gravity anomalies. After some data cleaning, observations in shallow waters, as well as some ship tracks were still unreliable. By excluding the observations in shallow waters, the derived gravity field model compares well in ocean depths deeper than 2,000 m.