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A comment on We Need to Map the Ocean Floor. Parent comment

Re:We Need to Map the Ocean Floor by mr_overalls on Friday November 08, 2019 @11:47AM (#21483982)
Does multibeam sonar function well in the presence of temperature/salinity stratification layers in the water column?

I don't have the first clue about sonar, but as someone who crunches data for environmental assessments, stratification occasionally plays hell with a lot of chemical & biological models.

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Re:We Need to Map the Ocean Floor by breatheoften on Friday November 08, 2019 @01:24PM (#21485141)
Those layers are why you need to measure the sound speed profile -- speed of sound as a function of depth. The variation in sound speed in the water column affects not only the travel time of acoustic energy -- but also the path -- (snell's law).
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