Bathymetry inversion using the deflection of the vertical: A case study in South China Sea

Abstract

The deflection of the vertical is one of the essential products of altimetry. However, unlike gravity and vertical gravity gradients, it is seldom used in bathymetry inversion. In this study, an algorithm for bathymetry inversion using the deflection of the vertical is proposed. First, we separately derive the formulas for the bathymetry inversion from the north and east components of the vertical deflection and introduce the data processing. Then a local area in the South China Sea is selected as an example to test the method. The bathymetry inversion based on gravity anomaly is also conducted for comparison. Assuming the ship-borne depths are the true values, the error standard deviations (STDs) of the bathymetry derived by north and east components of the vertical deflection are 156.64 m and 165.57 m, respectively. It indicates that the north component has a better performance in bathymetry inversion than the east component. The inversion results from the combination of both components show a higher accuracy of bathymetry than that from a single component. The difference between the error STD of the combination results and that of the gravity anomaly is less than 0.2 m. The experiment's results also show that the precision of the derived bathymetry can be improved if the parameters of linear regression are adjusted according to water depths. In summary, among the gravity field products used in this study, the gravity anomaly yielded the best performance in the bathymetry inversion. However, since additional data and computation time are required to derive gravity anomalies from altimetric observations, the vertical defections can still be used as supplements, especially in areas where accurate vertical deflections exist.

Keywords

• Bathymetry
• Deflection of the vertical
• Gravity anomaly
• Satellite altimetry