Sound propagation in areas with a complex meteorology: a meteorological-acoustical model

Abstract

Long range sound propagation is largely affected by the vertical wind and temperature gradients. These gradients are more complicated in areas where the meteorology can be complex, such as: coastal areas, islands, and lake districts. Furthermore, the gradients usually vary as a function of the horizontal distance, for instance at water-land crossings near a coast or a lake. As a result the sound propagation in these areas cannot be calculated with "standard" acoustic models, such as the ISO 9613 or Harmonoise engineering model. By using an advanced meso-scale meteorological model, which is using large-scale weather forecast data, and an acoustical model, that incorporates horizontal and vertical meteorological variations, long range sound propagation in such complex areas is calculated. In this paper we present two applications of this hybrid meteorological-acoustical calculation scheme: i) propagation of impulse noise in a coastal area, and ii) propagation of industrial noise in a rural area with a lake. For the coastal area sound level contours have been calculated as a function of the meteorology for a complete year. For the lake area the effect of the lake on the sound propagation is demonstrated.