Ocean ambient noise field modelling and the optimized noise term

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to determine the frequency and wind-wave forcing dependent effective sea surface noise source level per unit area extracted from the hourly minimum sound power levels of six month-long acoustic recordings. The effect of the propagation environment is accounted for using Bellhop. The simulated environment is configured using climatological sound velocity profiles to capture seasonal effects and bottom sound speed estimates made from seabed sediment maps. Hourly meteorological data were extracted from ERA5 providing relevant wind and wave parameters from which noise levels may be predicted. A weighted composite model consisting of neutral wind and significant wave height leveraging the two-term exponential regression function proved to maximize model R2. Received level data originating from 16 hydrophone stations in the North Atlantic and Labrador Sea were combined with the Bellhop TL simulations in order to produce estimates of the effective noise source level per unit area (NSL/A) for changing surface environmental conditions and inter-compared. Hourly minimum sound power level derived model-data comparisons using horizontal wind speed magnitude 10 m above sea level expressed a decrease in NSL/A estimates versus Kewley (1990) by 10 to 15 dB from 1 to 3 kHz.