Sound in the Atmosphere: Much More than Musical or Chaotic Noise

Dennis W. Thomson

Professor of Meteorology and the Graduate Program in Acoustics

Pennsylvania State University

Our atmospheric environment is more than a mixture of gases and particles. We live in an "ocean" of light, sounds and odors. If the sounds which we hear have propagated more than a few meters through the atmosphere, their properties are altered substantially by, in particular, refractive focusing, absorption, dispersion and scattering.

In this audio example-based lecture I discuss and demonstrate how common meteorological phenomena control and change the properties of natural and man-made noise signals. Thus, listening in our audio environment of constantly changing, musical, cacaphonic and chaotic sounds provides wonderful opportunities to understand some aspects of atmospheric physics and non-linear dynamical processes.