Patent ID: 7979210

Claim:
A method for processing seismic data to be used in correcting for errors caused by variation in water conditions, the method performed by a computer system comprising: (a) solving, by the computer system, for Δs i based on CMP-bin centered, NMO corrected, dip corrected observed water bottom reflection times, wherein Δs i is an estimate of the difference in slowness between one or more observed water bottom reflection times and one or more water bottom reflection times that would have been observed had a water velocity for the observed water bottom reflection times been the same as a model water velocity; (b) solving, by the computer system, for an estimate of observed water velocity based on s obs,i =s m +Δs i , where s obs,i is an estimate of observed slowness and s m is defined as a model slowness; and (c) layer replacing, by the computer system, the observed water bottom reflection times using the estimate of the observed water velocity and the model water velocity.