Ocean temperature and salinity distributions inverted from combined reflection seismic and XBT data

Abstract

Seismic oceanography has been widely used to detect many kinds of oceanographic features as a new oceanographic prospecting method. Inversion for temperature and salinity distributions from seismic data is a very important research field in seismic oceanography. We analyzed low frequency seismic data from one multichannel seismic (MCS) line acquired in the scope of the European GO Project (line GOLR-12) combined with the simultaneously acquired XBT (eXpendable BathyThermograph) and CTD (Conductivity-TemperatureDepth) data, which are located to the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. We used a post-stack constrained impedance inversion method to derive temperature and salinity distributions of sea water and the result demonstrated that this method can indeed provide reliable temperature and salinity distribution profiles every 6.25m along the seismic line, with the temperature resolutions of 0.16◦C. This method applied to good quality MCS data can provide high lateral-resolution temperature and salinity profiles for oceanographic research, using only a few oceanographic measurements to constrain the inversion procedure.