A stable iterative downward continuation of potential field data

•A stable iterative downward continuation method is presented.•The proposed method is stable and sensitive to noise.•The precision of the results computed by the proposed method is higher.

Downward continuation is a useful tool in the processing of potential field data, which can effectively enhance weak anomalies and identify overlap anomalies, but we all know that the computation of downward continuation is unstable, and easily distorts the true feature of potential field data. Because the computation of upward continuation and horizontal derivatives is stable, we proposed using the combination of upward continuation and horizontal derivative to accomplish the downward continuation of potential field data. The proposed method is demonstrated on synthetic potential field data, and the results show that the proposed method can finish the downward continuation of the data stably and precisely, and the precision of the proposed method is higher than the traditional method. We also apply it to real potential field data, and the results show that the proposed method accomplishes the downward continuation of the real data stably.