James F. Lynch
Timothy F. Duda
Dept. of Appl. Ocean Phys. & Eng., Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst., Woods Hole, MA 02543
In trying to answer the question posed in this title, the following outline is followed. First, the dominant oceanographic processes that effect shallow water (coastal) acoustic propagation in the 50-Hz to 2-kHz band is identified. Next, how well these ocean processes are understood and modeled, and how the models are constrained by standard input data is investigated. The limits of predictability of the ocean field (spatially and temporally) are then examined. The issue of the sensitivity of the acoustic field to the particular ocean processes is investigated, followed by the predictability of the acoustic field propagating through the ocean processes. The various measures of the acoustic field (proploss, coherence, etc.) one uses to quantify the ocean/acoustic interaction are considered, reflecting the needs of various acoustics applications. Which acoustics models are appropriate for describing propagation through particular oceanographic fields is also addressed. Finally, the impact of this forward modeling study on possible inverse problem studies for the oceanography is discussed.