Atmospheric sound propagation is influenced by a range of local meteorological conditions, including wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, and cloud coverage. The goal of the broader project is to collect concurrent meteorological and acoustic transmission loss observations in a wide variety of conditions to allow for validation of acoustic transmission loss predictions. This research has broad applications in areas such as naval operations, offshore wind farms, and civil infrastructure development. Field experiments conducted during summer 2025 used a pitch-catch setup: pure tone bursts are emitted from a long-range acoustic source and recorded by two vertical microphone arrays. One array is located 0.8 km from the source over a fully water-based path. The second array, 1.4 km from the source, captures a mixed propagation path—1 km over water and 400 m over land. This work focuses on wind speed gradients measured in the direction of propagation, along with temperature gradients measured up to 7 m over water and over land. Results of measured transmission losses are compared to measurement-informed transmission loss predictions using a Crank–Nicholson parabolic equation solver.
Kirwin et al. (Wed,) studied this question.