Influence of environmental perturbations on acoustic signals in the 2021 New England Shelf Bread Acoustics experiment

During the 2021 New England Shelf Break Acoustics (NESBA) experiment, real-time hydrodynamic and acoustic models deployed on shipboard high-performance computers (HPC) predicted acoustic signals sent and received within the NESBA mooring network. The hydrodynamic model incorporated field measurements of the physical environment in real time. While the resulting comparisons between models and received data produced similar patterns for strong arrivals, the cause for variation in weaker arrivals by detailed physical oceanographic variability is not trivial to deduce. In this presentation, the influence of perturbations to sub-bottom properties and small-scale water column variability on signals in the NESBA acoustic model is explored using sensitivity kernels. The predicted acoustic signal uncertainty will be further compared with measured variability to evaluate the model skill to capture acoustic fluctuation in the varying shelf break environment. [Work supported by the Office of Naval Research.]