MEANS: Multiscale environmental assessment network studies

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2000-11, Vol.108 (5_Supplement), p.2585-2585
• Main Authors: Schmidt, Henrik, Robinson, Allan, Kantha, Lakshmi, Sellschopp, Jurgen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4743608

The small-scale coastal acoustic environment is extremely difficult to predict and forecast. The very shallow near-shore region, with water depths of up to a few tens of meters, is particularly challenging due to the variability of the critical seabed properties due to sediment transport processes, biological processes, and changes in small-scale bathymetry due to wave action, with strong implications for the high-frequency reverberation characteristics in particular. The potential of using small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) with high dependency on acoustic systems in such environments has led to an increased need for forecasting the acoustic characteristics. The coastal ocean environment is a result of a very complex dynamical system with strong coupling among different scales. To investigate the predictability of this process, the MEANS effort implements a nested forecasting framework for the small-scale oceanography in Procchio Bay, Elba during the GOATS’2000 AUV technology experiment in Sep.–Oct. 2000. A local high-resolution model is constrained by assimilating oceanographic data from AUVs and moorings, and nested within a regional Ligurian Sea model and a basin scale circulation model, both constrained by surface ship measurements and satellite remote sensing data. The nested observation and modeling framework will be described, and preliminary results will be presented and discussed. [Work supported by ONR and SACLANT.]