Laboratory measurements of high-frequency, acoustic broadband backscattering from sea ice and crude oil

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Main Authors: Bassett, Christopher, Lavery, Andone C., Maksym, Ted, Wilkinson, Jeremy P.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Acoustical Society of America 2014
• Subjects: Arctic; Sea ice; ice covered waters
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/7131

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 137 (2015): EL32, doi:10.1121/1.4902421. Recent decreases in summer sea ice cover are spurring interest in hydrocarbon extraction and shipping in Arctic waters, increasing the risk of an oil spill in ice covered waters. With advances in unmanned vehicle operation, there is an interest in identifying techniques for remote, underwater detection of oil spills from below. High-frequency (200–565 kHz), broadband acoustic scattering data demonstrate that oil can be detected and quantified under laboratory grown sea ice and may be of use in natural settings. A simple scattering model based on the reflection coefficients from the interfaces agrees well with the data. Funding for the work was provided by the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement contract number E12PC00053. C.B. was supported by the WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar Program with funding provided by the United States Geological Survey.