Infrasonic ray tracing applied to small-scale atmospheric structures: thermal plumes and updrafts/downdrafts

A ray-tracing program is used to estimate the refraction of infrasound by the vertical structure of the atmosphere in thermal plumes, showing only weak effects, as well as in updrafts and downdrafts, which can act as vertical wave guides. Thermal plumes are ubiquitous features of the daytime atmospheric boundary layer. The effects of thermal plumes on lower frequency sound propagation are minor with the exception of major events, such as volcanoes, forest fires, or industrial explosions where quite strong temperature gradients are involved. On the other hand, when strong, organized vertical flows occur (e.g., in mature thunderstorms and microbursts), there are significant effects. For example, a downdraft surrounded by an updraft focuses sound as it travels upward, and defocuses sound as it travels downward. Such propagation asymmetry may help explain observations that balloonists can hear people on the ground; but conversely, people on the ground cannot hear balloonists aloft. These results are pertinent for those making surface measurements from acoustic sources aloft, as well as for measurements of surface sound sources using elevated receivers.