Modeling and Measurement of Ocean Generated Magnetic Fields

Motion of conductive seawater through the earth's magnetic field will produce magnetic fields. Magnetic fields from motions such as ocean waves and swells are detectable near the ocean's surface but decay rapidly with distance. Non-linear internal waves (NLIWs) generated by mechanisms such as tides over bathymetric features have been predicted to produce magnetic anomalies of .1-1 nT at altitudes of ~ 100 m above the surface (Chave, 1986) due to the large volumes of coherently moving water. An experiment was performed in 2009 by the Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to see if magnetic signatures predicted from oceanographic measurements could be detected by airborne and ocean bottom mounted magnetometers. The test was conducted near the shelf-break off the coast of New Jersey where NLIWs have been observed. Oceanographic measurements were collected by a set of bottom-mounted ADCPs, towed C-T sensors mounted on a "SCANFISH" tow-body, and a hull-mounted ADCP. Magnetic measurements consisted of total-field magnetometers co-located with the bottom mounted ADCPs, three magnetic base-stations (total field and vector) in New Jersey for geomagnetic noise cancellation, and magnetometers aboard two aircraft ( a Canadian National Research Council Convair 580 and the NRL P-3) flown simultaneously with a 20-30 second separation ( corresponding to 2-3 km) along a repeat track over the bottom-mounted sensors. The multiple aircraft and repeat tracks were intended to remove the spatially stationary geologic component. The time-varying geomagnetic signal was extrapolated from the magnetic base-stations to the aircraft measurements. Both aircraft had high quality magnetometers and magnetic-field compensation systems based on co-located vector magnetometers and kinematic GPS. The Convair had two magnetometer and compensation systems mounted in wing-pods with a base-line of ~ 32 m that allowed the calculation of a cross-track gradient. Total-field compensated and edited data from each aircraft and the magnetic base-station data were low-pass filtered and sub-sampled to 4Hz for analysis. Data from the magnetic base-stations exhibit good coherence, as do the data from the ocean-bottom magnetometers. After correction for the geomagnetic component, the two aircraft residuals matched quite closely in both amplitude and phase in many places, but in other places the phase match was poor. This produced an overall poor coherence between the two residuals. However, cross-spectral analysis showed that there was a statistical correlation between the two aircraft residuals in the frequency band 0.02-0.05 Hz (5000-2000 m wavelength for an aircraft flying at 100 m/s). Both the amplitude (0.1-0.2 nT) and wavelength were consistent with predictions computed from the 3-D water velocities and conductivity from the ADCP using a simple model. The predicted undersea magnetic fields correlated well with the measured undersea magnetometer fields at times, but they rarely matched at the "wiggle-for-wiggle" level. More often, it was the statistics that correlated well.