Meteorology: The Science of the Atmosphere

by Charles Fitzhugh Talman

Writers have often commented on the fact that thunder cannot be heard so far as the sounds of artillery. It has been affirmed that 10 miles or thereabouts is its maximum range of audibility. As a matter of fact, however, thunder has occasionally been heard at much greater distances, up to 20 or 30 miles; but it remains true that the distance is always much less than that at which loud terrestrial sounds are audible. The reasons why this should be so are not far to seek. In the first place, the intensity of a sound depends upon the density of the air in which it is generated, and not upon that of the air in which it is heard. The air, as we know, diminishes in density upward. Balloonists thousands of feet above the earth hear with remarkable clearness sounds from the ground below, but people on the ground cannot hear similar sounds from the balloon. As thunder is mainly produced at the level of the clouds, it is subject to this peculiarity. Again, cannonading is heard at great distances only when the air is comparatively calm, and perhaps only when it is arranged in well-defined horizontal layers of such a character as to keep the sound from spreading far aloft. Very different conditions prevail during a thunderstorm; in fact the conditions are then just such as would scatter and dissipate the sound waves. Lastly, the noise of a cannon or the like comes from a single place and the energy of the disturbance is concentrated to produce a single system of sound waves; while the disturbance due to lightning is spread over the long path of the discharge.

The audibility of sounds at abnormally great distances is not usually a matter of practical importance, but the converse phenomenon—the failure of sounds to carry to normal distances—has been responsible for a great number of marine disasters on such fog-ridden coasts as those of the British Isles, eastern Canada and California. Hence some of the ablest physicists of both the Old World and the New have tried to ascertain the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs.

The scientific study of fog signals, dating especially from Tyndall’s well-known investigations at the South Foreland, in England, in 1873, and those of General Duane and Professor Joseph Henry in America, begun somewhat earlier but continued contemporaneously with Tyndall’s, has probably raised more questions than it has answered. The caprices of these signals take the shape of variations in the range of audibility—a signal may at one time carry 10 miles and at another only 2—and the formation of “zones of silence,” comparatively near the signal, within which the sound is not heard though audible at much greater distances. The silent zones are sometimes more or less permanent and are then generally due to peculiarities of topography; but in many cases they are transient and opinions differ as to their cause or causes. Since it is only when fog prevails that fog signals are sounded (except for experimental purposes), and that vessels meet with accidents on account of the failure to hear such signals, the idea has become rooted in the public mind that these acoustic eccentricities are entirely due to fog. When, however, experiments are made in clear weather, similar phenomena are observed.

In foggy weather audibility is often better than the average, because fog prevails chiefly when the air is still and of uniform temperature, and such conditions favor the transmission of sound. Tyndall strongly denied that either fog or falling rain, snow, and hail have, as has been commonly believed, a muffling effect on sound, and he attributed the peculiar behavior of fog signals to the presence in the atmosphere of invisible “acoustic clouds,” consisting of patches of air containing irregularities of temperature and humidity. To the same cause he ascribed the occurrence of mysterious “aerial echoes,” not due to any visible object. Several recent investigators have disputed these conclusions. Thus it is asserted that when the fog signal is in fog and the observer in a clear atmosphere, or vice versa, or when the signal and the observer are in different fog banks, the fog reflects the sound very strongly. Apart from the possible effects of fog itself, the very extensive investigations made by Prof. L. V. King, of McGill University, at Father Point, Quebec, led him to conclude that the effects are chiefly due to eddies in the atmosphere. Prof. King used in his observations the latest devices for obtaining exact measurements of sound and such up-to-date meteorological apparatus as pilot balloons for measuring the wind at various levels. He discovered, among other things, that existing types of fog-signal machinery are very wasteful of energy, and he has pointed out how their “acoustic efficiency” may be much improved. Before we dismiss this subject it should be noted that submarine bells and the radio compass have made mariners much less dependent than they formerly were upon the types of signals that are affected by meteorological conditions.

“Zones of silence” on a much more extensive scale than those that disturb the operation of fog signals have been frequently observed, in recent years, in connection with great explosions, cannonading, and volcanic eruptions. The first case of this kind to attract scientific notice was that of a dynamite explosion at Förde, Westphalia, on December 14, 1903, the acoustic phenomena of which were investigated by Dr. G. von dem Borne; and among the many cases that have since been studied was that of the bombardment of Antwerp in October, 1914. Without describing these various cases separately, we may state that when reports were collected from the surrounding country to determine the places at which the sounds were audible and these reports were entered on a map, it was found that there was a large and usually very irregular area of audibility surrounding the source of sound, beyond which lay a broad, more or less circular zone of inaudibility, and finally, beginning about 100 miles from the source, there was a second large region of audibility, extending perhaps 150 miles from the source. In some cases a single sound at the source gave multiple reports (double, triple, or quadruple), chiefly in the outer zone of audibility.

In his attempt to explain these curious silent zones, Von dem Borne pointed out that the atmosphere at very high levels is supposed to consist mainly of hydrogen, in which sound travels nearly four times as fast as in the common gases of the lower air, and that sound waves ascending to such heights along a slanting course would be bent strongly toward the earth. Another student of this phenomenon, Dr. A. Wegener, who is the champion of the idea that the atmosphere contains an unknown gas lighter than hydrogen (called “geocoronium” or “zodiacon”), sees in the prevalence of this gas at high levels the cause of a similar quasi-reflection of sound waves. Probably the majority of investigators, however, believe that the effect is due chiefly or entirely to the refraction of sound by wind.

Of acoustic phenomena that belong especially to the domain of meteorology, probably thunder is the one that excites most general interest. The sudden expansion of the air along the path of a lightning discharge, due partly but probably not entirely to the heat generated, appears to be an adequate explanation of the explosive sound of thunder, though somewhat different explanations have been suggested. If the discharge is near at hand, we generally hear a single loud crash. More distant lightning is usually attended by rumbling. The common and obvious explanation of rumbling is that it is due to the arrival of the sound progressively from different points along the path of discharge, which may be a mile or more in length. A crooked path would account for reenforcements and diminutions of the sound. Another cause of irregularities in the sound is probably “interference” (combinations of waves that tend either to strengthen or to neutralize each other), especially in the case of multiple lightning discharges, such as we have described elsewhere. Lastly, thunder is further complicated by echoes from the ground and probably also from the air (not exclusively from clouds), though much uncertainty prevails concerning these aerial echoes. The sounds of thunder have been the subject of some interesting investigations on the part of an Austrian meteorologist, Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt, who has devised apparatus for making an automatic registration of the sound waves that constitute a thunderclap. He finds that there is a great preponderance of waves of very long period, including many of too low a pitch to be audible, though perceptible through the rattling of windowpanes, etc. In fact, the greater part of the energy involved is represented by these long, inaudible waves, so that one really hears only a small part of a clap of thunder.

The statement has often been made, on the authority of Humboldt, that thunder is never heard at sea, at any point far from land. This matter was investigated by the magnetic survey yacht Carnegie during a long cruise in the Pacific in 1915. Of twenty-two displays of lightning, six were accompanied by thunder.

The late war gave prominence to certain acoustic phenomena which, though hardly mysterious, were novel to the world at large. One of those was the double report (triple in the case of an exploding shell) heard near the line of fire of large guns. This effect is due to the fact that modern projectiles travel much faster than sound. The moving projectile sets up its own waves in the air, like those at the bow of a steamer, which may reach the ear of the observer and produce the sensation of a sharp sound before he hears the sound coming from the mouth of the gun. Another phenomenon frequently observed when heavy firing was in progress was the appearance in the sky of rapidly moving parallel arcs of light and shade. These were generally seen against clouds, but sometimes they swept across blue sky. They probably occurred only in calm weather. These arcs were the result of the successive condensations and rarefactions of the air constituting waves of sound—visible sound waves. Their visibility was due to contrasts in the refraction of light passing through air of different densities; the same sort of refraction contrasts that cause the tremulous appearance of the air over a hot stove, for example. The same “flashing arcs” of light have been described by Prof. F. A. Perret as attending explosive volcanic outbursts at the craters of Vesuvius and Ætna.

The humming of telegraph wires has been the subject of a certain amount of discussion in meteorological circles, but without altogether satisfactory results. This sound is not, of course, caused or affected by the electric currents passing along the wire, and it is almost certainly due solely to the wind, though the suggestion has been made that it might be caused by the microseisms, or small and rapid earthquake tremors, that are so commonly registered by seismographs while imperceptible to the human senses. The humming is best heard when one’s ear is placed against a telegraph pole. Several persons have made systematic observations of these sounds from day to day, and it has often been alleged that they vary with the temperature, the movements of storms, etc., and even constitute a safe basis for weather predictions. They are sometimes heard when the air appears to be perfectly calm, but in such cases there might be some movement of the air at the level of the wires, though there was none at the lower level of the observer. From what is known about “æolian tones” (such as those of the æolian harp), it would seem that the humming requires a wind more or less at right angles to the wire, and that the pitch of the sound depends upon the force of the wind and the diameter (but not the length or tension) of the wire. For a given wire, the stronger the wind the higher the pitch of its sound.