Refinement of marine gravity anomaly over shallow waters by using satellite-derived bathymetry

Gravity anomaly over shallow waters is one of the fundamental data sources for studying sea level change, ocean currents, and water exchanges between coastal areas and open seas. However, the acquirement of gravity data over shallow waters faces multiple challenges due to the degraded quality of satellite altimetry data and scarcity of surveyed gravimetric observations. To alleviate this problem, we establish a framework for marine gravity anomaly refinement by using satellite-derived bathymetry (SDB). We use a cosine-tapered band pass filter to extract high-frequency gravity signals from the SDB data, which compensate for the unresolved signals in satellite altimetric gravity data. Numerical experiments over the Discovery Reef and an offshore region near the Port Hedland demonstrate that the utilization of SDB effectively strengths marine gravity anomaly. By combining the SDB data, the fits between the enhanced gravity anomaly models and surveyed airborne gravity data are improved, by 5.3–15.7% in comparison to an altimetric gravity model DTU21GRA. The SDB calculated from the linear band model has slightly better performances in gravity anomaly modeling than that computed from the band ratio model and physical-based approach, agreeing well with the SDB validation results. Our results verify the feasibility of using the SDB computed from the physical-based approach for gravity anomaly augmentation, which is of great value in areas devoid of ground truth depths. This study cements a way for the augmentation of marine gravity anomaly worldwide, especially in remote regions characterized by the scarcity of ground-based gravity data.