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The Contribution of DTU17 Marine Gravity for the Arctic Bathymetry Predictiction

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Abstract

The Arctic Ocean is a challenging region, because of itscomplex and not well-documented bathymetry,together combined with the intermittent presence ofsea ice and the fact that the in situ tidal observations aresparse at such high latitudes. The existing bathymetrymap of the Arctic is purely derived from the sparse shipsounding data, particularly on latitudes higher than 81°(e.g. IBCAOv3). The gaps (or data holes) are filled byextrapolation and somehow inaccurate.Smith&Sandwell combined the ship sounding data withbathymetry predicted from gravity up to latitude 81° tofill the gaps. However, on even higher latitudes, thegravity to bathymetry prediction is not ever tried due tothe lack of high resolution (e.g. altimetry derived)marine gravity maps. As part of the ESA CryoSat Plus forOceans (CP4O) project, the Arctic bathymetry will bepredicted from the DTU17 marine gravity, whichshowed massive improvement compared to theprevious models (e.g. DTU15) in the Arctic.The aim of this work is to demonstrate the contributionof marine gravity for the bathymetry prediction in theArctic. With this presentation, the methodology todevelop the gravity to bathymetry prediction will bepresented. Due to the presence of thick sediments onthe seafloor, the gravity and seafloor topographycorrelation is not significant in some areas. Such areaswill be flagged and the accuracy of the predictedbathymetry will be evaluated.