The Bathymetric Stripping Corrections to Gravity Field Quantities for a Depth-Dependent Model of Seawater Density

Abstract

In geophysical studies investigating the lithosphere structure, topographic, bathymetric, and density contrasts stripping corrections are applied to gravity data. The ocean density contrast is typically calculated as the difference between the mean densities of crust and seawater. The approximation of the actual seawater density by its mean value yields relative errors up to 2%. To reduce these errors, we adopt a depth-dependent seawater density model to account for increasing density with pressure/depth. This approximation reduces errors to less than 0.1%. This density model is utilized in newly derived expressions for the bathymetric stripping corrections.

Keywords:

• Bathymetry
• forward modeling
• gravity
• ocean density contrast
• spherical harmonics
• stripping corrections

Acknowledgements

Pavel Novák was supported by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MSM4977751301) and the Czech Office of Surveying and Cadastre (CUZ0002561501) during the course of this investigation.