Seismic Images of Ocean Meso‐Scale Eddies and Internal Waves

Abstract

Abstract Marine reflection seismology is usually used for imaging the seafloor geological structure and exploring hydrocarbon and gas hydrate resources. Recent researches have shown that the multichannel seismic reflection method can also image the thermohaline fine structure in the water column. Meso‐scale eddies and internal waves are important phenomena in oceans. Because conventional physical oceanography measurements are carried out at discrete sites separated several kilometers with low lateral resolution, they cannot reveal the lateral distribution of Meso‐scale eddies and internal waves very well. This paper provides new evidence of clear seismic images of the Meso‐scale eddies in the eastern Atlantic Ocean and internal waves in the northeastern South China Sea. Compared with the traditional physical oceanographic methods, reflection seismology has several advantages, such as high lateral resolution and the ability of imaging a large ocean profile in short time. Reflection features change due to the Meso‐scale eddies and internal waves can be clearly imaged, which helps improve understanding of energy transfer among different scale processes of water motions in oceans.