Remote sensing of seamounts in the Central Indian Ocean bBasin using satellite altimetry

Abstract

We describe the use of satellite altimetry for the remote sensing of seamounts in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB). This is based on the statistical theory of detecting a given signal in the presence of background noise. Detection is achieved by passing the sea surface height data obtained by a satellite altimeter through a matched filter designed from a typical seamount signature model and power spectral density (PSD) of the background noise. A realistic seamount signature was computed for this purpose using gravitational potential theory and observed seamount dimensions. The PSD of an individual Geosat track was estimated using autoregressive modelling. For the sake of brevity, the results of processing only a few Geosat tracks in the region of study using the above technique have been reported in the paper. It was found that four charted seamounts were faithfully detected by the filter. Six uncharted seamounts were also predicted.