Recovery of bathymetry from altimeter data

At present, there exist two methods used to recover the bathymetry from altimeter data, i. e. the deterministic method and the stochastic method. In this paper, the principles of the two methods are introduced first. Then according to the theory of least-square collocation, a modified statistical model for recovering bathymetry from altimeter data is proposed. The new model has been used for computing the ocean depth in the South China Sea from altimeter-derived gravity anomalies. Finally the predicted depths are compared with the ship-borne depth. It shows that they agree with each other very well.