Acoustic attenuation from reflectivity in Chirp seismic data from the Red Sea

What is it about?

When sound penetrates the seabed, it is absorbed or reflected so that the signal becomes progressively weaker the further it travels in the sediments. Usually, this decrease (or attenuation) is an annoyance as it stops us from being able to image deeper structures within the seabed, though the rate of attenuation can also be interesting. It can be slow if the seabed has uniform properties or can be fast if there is gas or properties vary a lot. In this comment, I showed how the rate of attenuation can sometimes be easily extracted from sediment profiler ("Chirp") data using a simple display of the data.

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Why is it important?

Spatial variations in attenuation rates could provide another useful observation when exploring an area or when comparing areas.