Fields of application

The basic feature of the sound weather is that it predicts sound levels for the current weather condition during a given hour. Hence, it is an hourly forecast and not a long term average prediction. This feature yields new fields of application for noise management and noise assessment. The following list briefly itemizes some aspects.

• The operator of an installation can take into account the sound weather forecast to avoid noisy operations during favorable propagation conditions at the direction of the relevant neighborhood and therefore reduce complaints.
• Sound measurement campaigns outdoors can use the sound weather to adapt the measurement plan to the forecast of sound propagation conditions.
• The variation in the level series of long term monitoring systems around an installation will correlate to the sound weather up to a certain extent and can support the analysis in case of complaints.
• Daily sound weather ‑ on a web page of an installation for example ‑ will document that the management of the installation takes care of the noise load of its neighbors. This reduces complaints because the neighbor can understand that sometimes the management cannot avoid high levels due to most unfavorable weather conditions.
• Social studies can account for the time history of sound levels and possibly reduce the variance in the analysis by taking into account the particular propagation conditions during the survey.
• The meteorological correction can be objectified and differentiate into particular assessment times or seasons.
• Sound weather may be a ‘nice to have feature’ for weather reports: The message “Tonight will be a noisy night for all who are living to the south of high way.” may be just as interesting as the message of a high pollen counts or ozone levels.

Links

Hirsch K.-W.  "Sound weather – methods and applications", in Proceedings Internoise 2016, Hambourg

Hirsch K.-W. "Grundlagen und Anwendungen des Schallwetters"  Zeitschrift für Lärmbekämpfung Bd. 9 (2014) Nr. 6 - November, p. 267-275

Hirsch K.-W., Vogelsang B. M. "Meteorologische Korrekturen - Ermittlung auf der Grundlage einer Pegelstatistik", in  Fortschritte der Akustik, DAGA 2015, Nürnberg

MeteoGroup, Wetter gegen den Lärm.  Mitteilungen der Deutschen Meteorologischen Gesellschaft (2014)2 ISSN 0177 8501, p. 27-28