Comment [on “Deep‐penetration heat flow probes raise questions about interpretations from shorter probes” by Géli et al.

Abstract

Géli et al. [2001] (Eos, 17 July 2001, p. 317) recently presented three examples of particularly deep marine gravity‐corer temperature observations made to 18 m below the sea floor (mbsf). They noted large deviations of shallow temperatures from the trends of the deep thermal gradients and called into question the accuracy realized with short probes commonly used in detailed heat‐flow studies. We show this to be not a general concern, although attention must be given to perturbations from bottom water temperature variations in some deep ocean locations. We also show that the detail with which geographic and depth variability of heat flow must commonly be defined cannot be achieved with corer‐outrigger observations. Successful interpretation of widely spaced observations like those presented by Géli et al. [2001] requires complementary detailed data collected with multi‐penetration probes.