Analysis of Low Frequency Ocean Noise: (1) From a Long-Term Experiment Across the U.S. East Coast, and (2) From the Wake Island Hydrophone Array During Northwest Pacific Typhoons

Abstract : The East Coast experiment, called the Environmentally Controlled Ocean floor NOise Monitoring Experiment (ECONOMEX), was designed to sample ambient noise in the water column and on the ocean floor across the continental shelf and slope east of Chesapeake Bar. A vertical array of hydrophones in the water column, a horizontal array of hydrophones, and three-component seismometers were deployed for several months in the spring of 1991. The experiment was designed to coincide with the Surface WAve Dynamics Experiment (SWADE) in order to take advantage of their extensive measurements of surface winds and directional ocean wave spectra in the same region. This comprehensive and long-term data set permits the identification of specific noise generation and propagation mechanisms for the continental shelf and slope, and evaluation of their contribution to the noise field under a wide variety of ocean surface conditions. The primary goal of studying data from the Wake Island Hydrophone Array is to quantify changes in the noise field due to the extreme ocean surface conditions produced by typhoons, and to identify mechanisms by which these storms produce noise.