Low Frequency Attenuation in the Arctic Ocean

Long range transmission loss of broadband seismic pulses in the Arctic under ice-free conditions

“…2(b) and 2(c) also use Eq. (1), but with a much higher attenuation coefficient empirically derived from transmission loss curves measured during arctic winter conditions during the mid-twentieth century (Marsh and Mellen, 1963;Buck and Greene, 1964;DiNapoli and Mellen, 1986):…”

“…Thus, in arctic conditions sound can propagate with minimal bottom interaction, potentially reducing transmission loss. However, acoustic scattering by both ice cover and surface roughness increases attenuation beyond what is typically measured for temperate deep-water propagation and what would be expected from geometric spreading losses and volume attenuation alone (Marsh and Mellen, 1963;Buck and Greene, 1964;DiNapoli and Mellen, 1986). This attenuation is strongly frequency-dependent for ice-covered waters; empirical measurements of this excess transmission loss as a function of frequency indicate an f 3/2 or f 2 relationship up to the kilohertz range, and numerous theoretical studies have sought to derive this relationship from statistical properties of ice floes and various scattering theories (Lepage and Schmidt, 1994).…”

“…The nature of underwater acoustic propagation in the Arctic Ocean has been a subject of interest for decades, for both scientific and military reasons (Kutschale, 1961;Marsh and Mellen, 1963;Buck and Greene, 1964;DiNapoli and Mellen, 1986). An extensive body of literature exists on long-range arctic acoustic propagation, but most research has focused on acoustic propagation under deep-water ice-covered conditions, perhaps because situations where extensive ice-free conditions exist in the Arctic have been historically uncommon.…”

Observation and inversion of seismo-acoustic waves in a complex Artic ice environment

“…In particular, the modeling of low frequency acoustic propagation under the sea ice canopy in the Arctic Ocean has proven to be an elusive problem [1]. The difficulty has not been in general that the necessary tools to do this modeling are unavailable.…”

Arctic Anthropogenic Sound Contributions from Seismic Surveys during Summer 2013

“…In this report, C is estimated for long range propagation loss using the received levels from the air gun used in the seismic survey. These results may be compared with for example the shallow water loss curves for the Barentsz Sea provided in Jensen et al (2000) that show very high low frequency losses (over 100 dB at 50 Hz at 10 km range) or empirical data in deep water in DiNapoli and Mellen (1986) (around 82 dB at 50 Hz at 100 km range). Additionally this may serve as input or control for low frequency arctic modeling (Gavrilov and Mikhalevsky, 2006;Alexander et al, 2013).…”