Influence of Differences in the Density of Seawater on the Measurement of the Underwater Gravity Gradient.

Abstract

In preparing gravity gradient reference maps for navigation purposes, researchers have tended to use a constant value for the density of seawater. However, the actual seawater density at a particular location may vary due to the effects of longitude, latitude and bathymetry. In this study, the right rectangular prism method was used to calculate the disturbing gravity gradient caused by the mass deficiency of seawater for three different seawater profiles in an area east of Taiwan. For this purpose, two seawater density models were used as alternatives to the constant seawater density model, and the alteration in the gravity gradient was calculated to quantify the error in the gravity gradient as a result of using a constant seawater density. The results demonstrated that the error in the gravity gradient can reach 1E for water at large depths. Moreover, the difference between the amplitude of the error of the corrected thermocline and that for the uncorrected seawater density model was found to be quite small. If a gravity gradient reference map with accuracy better than 1E is to be realized, the seawater density cannot be taken as constant during forward modeling.