Monitoring Thermal Exchange of Hot Water Mass via Underwater Acoustic Tomography with Inversion and Optimization Method

Thermal exchange of underwater water mass caused by marine heat wave is a hot point of research recently. In particular, because the water temperature observation along hot water mass transportation is hard work. Acoustic tomography is an advanced method to measure water temperature variations via sound signal transmission with multi-station network sensing. The 5 kHz frequency acoustic tomography used for observing water temperature variations caused by ocean heat waves is interesting work. In this paper, the numerical simulation of hot water mass is completed first, then floatation and diffusion of hot water mass in a simulation are monitored by acoustic tomography. A new inversion optimization method is proposed to obtain hot water mass transportation variations at two-dimensional temperature vertical profile. The proposed inversion method adds a regularized mode matrix and the optimization method adds the model correlation matrix to improve the results quality. The accuracy of inversion optimization results is compared and discussed, where the mean temperature error is less than 0.4 °C. Sensing water temperature variation of marine heat waves is verified via acoustic signal transmission and improved inversion optimization method. The water dynamical process observation is an application of acoustic tomography, which can be further used observe underwater environmental characteristics.