Estuaries are water regions that connect rivers and oceans, which are very important due to heavy traffic, fishery and other coastal engineering activities. Underwater acoustic technology offers a series of effective applications and technical supports for real-time monitoring and long-term preservation of the nature environment and ecosystem in these regions. However, estuaries are shallow waters with complicated temporal and spatial environmental variability, involving a variety of physical oceanographic processes, such as tidal water mixing and ocean winds/waves, which can significantly influence the underwater sound propagation and moreover, underwater acoustic communications. In order to perform reliably and effectively in such complex time-varying shallow-water ocean environments, next-generation underwater acoustic communication systems need an all new design based on the environmental variability of the physical ocean, which takes the environmental physics and time-varying variability into account and is able to adapt and switch to the optimal mode as the environment evolves. Therefore, a deep, comprehensive and thorough understanding of the link between the time-varying ocean environment, underwater acoustic channel, and underwater acoustic communication systems is highly required. ☐ This dissertation investigated the relationship between the shallow-water, time-varying environment of estuaries, the underwater sound propagation and underwater acoustic communications, which can help the design of underwater acoustic systems so that they can adapt the time-varying environment with wiser parameter configurations. In this dissertation, field data analysis, joint numerical modeling, together with a controllable laboratory experiment were used to study acoustic channel variability of a shallow estuary and its influence on the performance of underwater acoustic communications. This dissertation included four aspects: (a) Effect of water-column variation due to the tidal dynamics in an estuary on the underwater acoustic direct path; (b) Effect of time-varying surface roughness due to the wind-driven waves on underwater acoustic surface paths; (c) Numerically modeling the effect of time-varying wind-driven shallow-water waves on coherent underwater acoustic communications using a combined model; (d) Conducting a controllable laboratory experiment to investigate the time-varying wind-driven water waves on the performance of coherent and non-coherent underwater acoustic communications. ☐ The first two aspects focused on the link between the time-varying environment of an estuary and the underwater acoustic wave propagation. With field data analysis and joint numerical modeling, the time-varying variability of acoustic direct paths and surface-bounced paths from a high-frequency acoustic experiment conducted in the Delaware Bay estuary was explored. On one hand, periodical acoustic direct path fading was found in the tidal-straining Delaware Bay estuary, with the fading period as same as the semi-diurnal tide. Based on physical oceanography and ocean acoustics, the mechanism that causes the direct path fading and its link to the water dynamics of an estuary was investigated. On the other hand, the relationship between the acoustic surface paths and the surface wind speed was investigated, and the wind-influenced shallow-water time-varying channel was studied using field data analysis and a joint model combining physical oceanography and ocean acoustics. The joint numerical model, including a wind-wave model, a surface generation algorithm and a parabolic equation acoustic model, reproduced the relationship between the wind speed and surface reflection signals. ☐ The last two aspects applied the knowledge of underwater sound propagation in shallow estuaries into analyzing the performance of underwater acoustic communication systems, i.e., investigating how the fast fluctuation of a shallow-water environment (wind-driven waves) influences different fundamental modulation schemes for underwater acoustic communications. To better analyze the effect of environmental variability of the physical ocean on underwater acoustic communications, the surface condition was set as the only variation in the numerical modeling and the controllable laboratory experiment. On one hand, a combined model including physical oceanography, ocean acoustics, and underwater acoustic communication was used to study the time-varying underwater acoustic channel under different wind speeds, and the performance of the coherent acoustic communication (QPSK) system. On the other hand, a controllable laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the MFSK (representing the non-coherent acoustic communication) and the QPSK (representing the coherent acoustic communication) acoustic modulations. ☐ The main conclusions of the dissertation are as follows. For the time-varying variability of underwater acoustic channel: (a) Due to the tidal-straining water dynamics of an estuary, periodical water column exchange between the seawater and the freshwater, up-refracting sound speed profile is more likely to form by the end of ebb tide, which redirects sound signal away from the deep receivers and creates shadow zone for the sound direct path; (b) In an open estuary, the acoustic pressure of surface-bounced paths decreases with increased wind speed, as a result of increased acoustic scattering due to the wind-driven surface roughness. For underwater acoustic communications: (c) Coherent acoustic communications are sensitive to the fast time-varying variability, and performance decrease significantly with increased wind speed, as a result of increased channel variability and decreased temporal coherence; (d) Non-coherent acoustic communications are less sensitive to the channel variability, and the reduced multipath signals due to wind-wave surface may improve the system performance. ☐ The key novelties of this dissertation include: (a) Using a joint model involving physical oceanography and ocean acoustics to study the effect of time-varying estuarine environment (water-column variations and wind-driven surface waves) on underwater sound propagation and the underwater acoustic channels. (b) Using an integrated model involving physical oceanography, ocean acoustics, and underwater acoustic communications to study the effect of time-varying estuarine environment (wind-driven surface waves) on underwater acoustic communications. (c) Using field experimental data, numerical modeling and controllable laboratory experiment to study the underwater sound propagation and underwater acoustic communications in a time-varying ocean environment.