Data-Driven Analysis of Ocean Fronts’ Impact on Acoustic Propagation: Process Understanding and Machine Learning Applications, Focusing on the Kuroshio Extension Front

Ocean fronts, widespread across the global ocean, cause abrupt shifts in physical properties such as temperature, salinity, and sound speed, significantly affecting underwater acoustic communication and detection. While past research has concentrated on qualitative analysis and small-scale research on ocean front sections, a comprehensive analysis of ocean fronts’ characteristics and their impact on underwater acoustics is lacking. This study employs high-resolution reanalysis data and in situ observations to accurately identify ocean fronts, sound speed structures, and acoustic propagation features from over six hundred thousand Kuroshio Extension Front (KEF) sections. Utilizing marine big data statistics and machine learning evaluation metrics such as out-of-bag (OOB) error and Shapley values, this study quantitatively assesses the variations in sound speed structures across the KEF and their effects on acoustic propagation shifts. This study’s key findings reveal that differences in sound speed structure are significantly correlated with KEF strength, with the channel axis depth and conjugate depth increasing with front strength, while the thermocline intensity and depth excess decrease. Acoustic propagation features in the KEF environment exhibit notable seasonal variations.