Seismic waves are attenuated by losses of energy as they propagate through the earth. One way to model this numerically is to make the velocity a complex number, the real part giving the phase velocity and the imaginary part the attenuation. This models wave propagation in a medium for which the logarithmic decrement is independent of frequency(attenuation coefficient is proportional to frequncy). The aim is to modify forward and inverse numerical modeling so that attenuation can be specified as a function of position.