Noise Pollution

Institute of Engineering (IOE)

Pulchowk
Introduction
• Noise, commonly defined as unwanted sound, is an
environmental phenomenon to which we are exposed before
birth and throughout life.
• Noise is an environmental pollutant, a waste product generated
in conjunction with various anthropogenic activities. It is any
sound—independent of loudness that can produce an
undesired physiological or psychological effect in an individual,
and that may interfere with the social ends of an individual or
group.
• These social ends include all of our activities—communication,
work, rest, recreation, and sleep.
Introduction
• Noise, if defined as unwanted sound, is a subjective
experience. What is considered noise by one listener may be
considered desirable by another.
• noise has a short decay time and thus does not remain in the
environment for extended periods, as do air and water pollution
• the physiological and psychological effects of noise on us are
often subtle and insidious, appearing so gradually that it
becomes difficult to associate cause with effect
Properties of Sound Waves
• Sound waves result from the vibration of solid objects or the
separation of fluids as they pass over, around, or through holes
in solid objects. The vibration and/or separation causes the
surrounding air to undergo alternating compression and
rarefaction, much in the same manner as a piston vibrating in a
tube
• The compression of the air molecules causes a local increase in
air density and pressure. Conversely, the rarefaction causes a
local decrease in density and pressure. These alternating
pressure changes are the sound detected by the human ear.
Properties of Sound Waves
Properties of Sound Waves
• Also let us assume that you have an instrument that will measure the air
pressure every 0.000010 seconds and plot the value on a graph.
• If the piston vibrates at a constant rate, the condensations and rarefactions
will move down the tube at a constant speed.
• That speed is the speed of sound (c)
• The rise and fall of pressure at point A will follow a cyclic or wave pattern
over a “period” of time
• The wave pattern is called sinusoidal.
• The time between successive peaks or between successive troughs of the
oscillation is called the period (P)
• The inverse of this, that is, the number of times a peak arrives in one
second of oscillations, is called the frequency ( f ). Period and frequency
are then related as follows P = 1/f
Properties of Sound Waves
• Since the pressure wave moves down the tube at a constant speed,
you would find that the distance between equal pressure readings
would remain constant
• The distance between adjacent crests or troughs of pressure is
called the wavelength (λ)
• Wave-length and frequency are then related as follows: λ = c/f
• The amplitude (A) of the wave is the height of the peak or depth of
the trough measured from the zero pressure line
• The rms sound pressure is obtained by squaring the value of the
amplitude at each instant in time; summing the squared values;
dividing the total by the averaging time; and taking the square root of
the total
Properties of Sound Waves
• The equation for rms is

• Where, the overbar refers to the time-weighted average and T is

the time period of the measurement.
Sound Power and Intensity
• Traveling waves of sound pressure transmit energy in the direction of
propagation of the wave. The rate at which this work is done is
defined as the sound power (W).
• Sound intensity (I) is defined as the time-weighted average sound
power per unit area normal to the direction of propagation of the
sound wave
• Intensity and power are related as I = W/A where, where A is a unit
area perpendicular to the direction of wave motion
• Intensity, and hence, sound power, is related to sound pressure by I
= (prms)2/ρc where, ρ = density of medium, kg/m3 and c = speed of
sound in medium, m/s, I = intensity, W/m 2 and prms = root mean
square sound pressure Pa
Levels and the Decibel
• The sound pressure of the faintest sound that a normal healthy individual
can hear is about 0.00002 pascal.
• The sound pressure produced by a Saturn rocket at lift-off is greater than
200 pascal.
• Measurements on this scale are called levels.
• The unit for these types of measurement scales is the bel, which was
named after Alexander Graham Bell

L’ = level, bels; Q = measured quantity; Qo = reference quantity; log =

logarithm in base10
• A bel turns out to be a rather large unit, so for convenience it is divided into
10 subunits called decibels (dB)
Sound Power Level
• If the reference quantity (Qo) is specified, then the dB takes on
physical significance. For noise measurements, the reference
power level has been established as 10 -12 watts. Thus, sound
power level may be expressed as

• Sound power levels computed are reported as dB

Sound Intensity Level
• For noise measurements, the reference sound intensity is 10 -12
W/m2. The sound intensity level is given by
Sound Pressure Level
• Because sound-measuring instruments measure the root mean
square pressure, the sound pressure level is computed as
follows:
Averaging Sound Pressure Levels
• Because of the logarithmic nature of the dB, the average value of a
collection of sound pressure level measurements cannot be
computed in the normal fashion. Instead, the following equation must
be used

• where Lp = average sound pressure level, dB re: 20 µPa

• N = number of measurements
• Lj = the jth sound pressure level, dB re: 20 µPa
• j = 1, 2, 3 . . . , N
In Class Exercise
• What sound power level results from combining the following three
levels: 68 dB, 79 dB and 75 dB? (Answer: 80.7 dB)
• Compute the mean sound level from the following four readings (all
dBA): 38, 51, 68 and 78 (Answer: 68.7 dBA)
Hearing Mechanism
Hearing Mechanism
Hearing Mechanism
Damage-Risk Criteria
• Speech Interference
• Annoyance
• Sleep Interference
• Effects on Performance
• Acoustic Privacy
Community Noise Sources and Criteria
• Transportation Noise:
• Aircraft Noise,
• Highway Vehicle Noise,
• Other Internal Combustion Engines
• Construction Noise
Noise Control
• Source-Path-Receiver Concept
• Control of Noise Source by Design
• Reduce Impact Forces
• Reduce Speeds and Pressures
• Reduce Frictional Resistance
• Reduce Radiating Area
• Reduce Noise Leakage
• Isolate and Dampen Vibrating Elements
• Provide Mufflers/silencers
Noise Control
• Noise Control in the Transmission Path
• Separation
• Absorbing Materials
• Acoustical Lining
• Barriers and Panels
• Transmission Loss
• Enclosures
• Control of Noise Source by Redress
• Balance Rotating Parts
• Reduce Frictional Resistance
• Apply Damping Materials
• Seal Noise Leaks
• Perform Routine Maintenance
Protect the Receiver
• When All Else Fails
• Alter Work Schedule
• Ear Protection
Climate Change
Institute of Engineering (IOE)
Pulchowk
Climate Terms
• Adaptation: Actions that reduce vulnerability to the impacts of
climate change, such as extreme weather, sea-level rise, and
biodiversity loss.
• Carbon Removal vs. Carbon Capture: Carbon removal eliminates
greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, while carbon capture traps
emissions before they enter the atmosphere, typically from industrial
sources.
• Carbon Markets: Systems where carbon credits, representing the
reduction or removal of one ton of carbon dioxide, are bought and
sold to offset emissions.
Climate Terms
• Carbon Sink: Natural systems, such as forests, oceans, and soil, that absorb
more carbon dioxide than they emit.
• Circular Economy: A model of production and consumption that aims to
minimize waste, promote the reuse of materials, and reduce environmental
impact.
• Climate Crisis: The severe and wide-ranging challenges posed by climate
change, including extreme weather, rising sea levels, and loss of
biodiversity.
• Climate Finance: Financial resources provided to support climate action,
including mitigation and adaptation efforts, often from public and private
sources.
Climate Terms
• Climate Justice: Ensuring fairness and equity in climate action,
focusing on how climate change disproportionately impacts
vulnerable and marginalized communities.
• Climate Overshoot: A scenario where global temperatures exceed the
Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C temporarily before returning to lower
levels.
• COP: The Conference of the Parties, an annual UN climate change
conference where global climate negotiations take place.
• Climate Security: The idea that climate change exacerbates risks like
food and water insecurity, displacement, and conflict, affecting global
stability.
Climate Terms
• Decarbonization: The process of reducing carbon emissions,
particularly through transitioning to renewable energy and
sustainable practices across industries.
• Feedback Loop: A process where climate changes trigger further
changes, such as ice melt leading to more heat absorption, amplifying
warming.
• Global Warming vs. Climate Change: Global warming refers to the rise
in Earth's average surface temperature, while climate change includes
broader shifts in weather patterns due to this warming.
Climate Terms
• Green Jobs: Jobs that contribute to environmental sustainability, such
as in renewable energy, conservation, or low-carbon technologies.
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Gases like carbon dioxide and methane
that trap heat in Earth's atmosphere, causing global warming.
• Greenwashing: When companies falsely promote themselves as
environmentally friendly to appeal to consumers, while failing to take
meaningful action.
• IPCC: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific
body providing authoritative reports on climate science, impacts, and
solutions.
Climate Terms
• Renewable Energy: Energy from sources that are replenished naturally,
such as wind, solar, and hydropower, offering a cleaner alternative to fossil
fuels.
• Just Transition: A framework for shifting to a low-carbon economy in a way
that ensures inclusivity, fairness, and support for affected workers and
communities.
• Loss and Damage: Refers to the irreversible impacts of climate change,
such as loss of life, land, culture, or ecosystems, that go beyond adaptation
efforts.
• Mitigation: Actions taken to reduce or prevent the emission of greenhouse
gases, aiming to slow the rate of climate change.
Climate Terms
• Nature-Based Solutions: Actions that protect, manage, or restore
ecosystems to address societal challenges like climate change,
enhancing biodiversity and human well-being.
• Paris Agreement: A legally binding international treaty that aims to
limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, compared
to pre-industrial levels.
• Reforestation vs. Afforestation: Reforestation is the replanting of trees
in deforested areas; afforestation involves planting trees in areas that
were not previously forested.
Climate and Weather
Weather Climate
The day-to-day conditions of the atmosphere, such as The average weather conditions of a place over a long
temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and wind period of time, typically 30 years
speed
Changes over minutes, hours, days, and weeks Changes after a long period of time
Affected by many factors, including air pressure, Includes rainfall, temperature, snow, or any other
temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and weather condition
cloud formation
Can seem chaotic because a small change to any of What you expect the weather to be like in a specific
these conditions can create a different weather area over a long period of time
pattern
If it's usually hot and dry in the summer, that's the If it's sunny or raining today, that's the weather.
climate
The Sun and Climate Change
• Earth’s climate is warming due to human activities that
increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere - not because of the Sun
• The Sun does influence Earth’s climate, and the amount of
energy that reaches Earth from the Sun does change over
time, but only by a fraction of a percent
• These very small variations in solar energy output and the
current orientation of Earth relative to the Sun do not
account for the climate warming trend we have been
experiencing since we began burning fossil fuels and
increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
How Does the Sun Influence Earth’s Climate
• The Sun is the source of energy that drives Earth’s climate system.
Solar radiation warms the atmosphere and produces global wind
patterns due to the uneven distribution of solar energy across the
planet’s surface (because of Earth’s spherical shape and the tilt of
its axis)
• Cloud formation, precipitation, and temperatures at different
locations on Earth are all directly influenced by the Sun
• Solar energy drives photosynthesis in ocean and land plants,
which can influence the drawdown of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere and help cool the climate
• Thus, the Sun is largely responsible for Earth’s climate
• Climate changes caused by the Sun take place over much longer
spans of time, hundreds of thousands of years, versus the rapid
warming we have been experiencing in recent decades
Changes in the Amount of Solar Energy Reaching
the Earth Are Not Causing Climate Change
• Scientists have been monitoring the Sun long enough to
observe that there has not been a drastic increase in the
amount of solar energy reaching the Earth’s upper
atmosphere, called solar irradiance, that would cause the
rapid warming we are currently experiencing
• In fact, NASA satellite observations suggest that solar
irradiance has actually been decreasing over the past 40
years or so
• The graph below shows that the trend of increasing global
temperature does not follow the trend for solar irradiance
• The amount of energy the Sun produces varies over an 11-
year cycle
Changes in the Amount of Solar Energy Reaching
the Earth Are Not Causing Climate Change
• At the peak of the cycle, called the solar maximum,
the Sun is extremely active, with many sunspots and
solar storms
• After the peak, solar activity decreases for about 11 years
until it reaches the solar minimum
• Even accounting for these small ups and downs in solar
activity, there is not enough of an increase in recent
solar irradiance that explains current climate warming
Changes in the Amount of Solar Energy Reaching
the Earth Are Not Causing Climate Change
• here are periodic changes to Earth’s orbit that influence
our climate, however the amount of climate warming we
are currently experiencing cannot be explained by these
predictable orbit cycles
• The Earth's three unique orbital cycles are referred to as
eccentricity, obliquity, and axial precession
Eccentricity
• Earth’s orbit around the Sun is influenced by the gravitational pull
of other planets in our solar system
• The gravity of other planets pulls on Earth just enough to change
the shape of our path around the Sun from circular to elliptical
• The shape of Earth’s orbit, referred to as eccentricity, elongates
from circular to elliptical and back again about every 100,000
years
• When the orbit is at its most elongated shape, and Earth is
positioned farthest away from the Sun, 23% less solar energy
reaches our planet
• Earth is currently at its least elliptical eccentricity; however, the
change in orbital shape happens so gradually that it cannot
explain the rapid recent climate warming we are experiencing
Obliquity
• Earth is tilted on its axis, currently at a 23.4° angle.
However, the angle of tilt, or obliquity, changes over a
41,000-year cycle
• The change in obliquity is enough to affect the amount
of sunlight that reaches different latitudes and changes
the climate
• The Earth is currently about halfway between the
maximum and minimum tilt
Axial Precession
• The Earth “wobbles” on its axis, influenced by the
gravitational pull of the moon and the Sun, in a 26,000-
year cycle, called the axial precession
• This wobble changes the direction of the axis, which
affects the length of seasons and influences the climate
over long periods of time
Changes in the Amount of Solar Energy Reaching
the Earth Are Not Causing Climate Change
• Together, these periodic changes in Earth's orbit are
referred to as Milankovitch Cycles
• The effect on Earth’s climate due to each cycle on its
own is small
• However, taken together, they do account for
predictable climate changes that span thousands of
years
• When the orbit is elongated, the tilt is low, and the
wobble is such that the Northern Hemisphere is pointed
away from the Sun during the summer
Changes in the Amount of Solar Energy Reaching
the Earth Are Not Causing Climate Change
• This positioning correlates with the onset of past Ice
Ages when Earth’s climate became significantly colder
and great ice sheets formed across parts of the surface
• Our current place within Milankovitch cycles suggests
that Earth should be in a slight cooling period, which is in
stark contrast to the rapid climate warming we are
actually experiencing
Not All Layers of the Atmosphere Are
Experiencing Warming
• If the Sun was sending more energy to the Earth and causing
the climate to warm, all layers of the atmosphere would be
warming. However, that is not the case
• The troposphere, from the surface up to about 10 km, is warming
• But the stratosphere, the layer above the troposphere, is
actually cooling
• Because more heat is being trapped near the surface due to
a build up of greenhouse gases in the troposphere, there is
less heat moving into the stratosphere
• Heat is still lost into space from the upper atmosphere, but
with less heat entering the upper layers, the overall result is
cooling in the stratosphere
What is An Inversion
• A temperature inversion is a layer in the atmosphere in which
air temperature increases with height. An inversion is present in
the lower part of a cap.
• The cap is a layer of relatively warm air aloft (above the
inversion). Air parcels rising into this layer become cooler than
the surrounding environment, which inhibits their ability to
ascend
Why Temperature Inversion Happens?
• Air near the ground cools more quickly than air aloft. This is
most likely when the sky is clear and the wind is light/calm.
• Cooling will occur the most readily in low places (such as
valleys sheltered from the wind).
When Temperature Inversion Happens?
• This often happens in the late afternoon/early evening (before
sunset) and lingers into the next morning (after sunrise) for a
few hours.
Problem of Temperature Inversion
• Since warm air rises, air under the inversion cannot escape
because it is cooler than farther aloft. Smoke and pollution get
trapped
Signs of Temperature Inversion
• Clear skies (no clouds)
• Calm (wind < 3 mph)
• Closer to sunrise or sunrise
• Dew Present
• Horizontal smoke pattern
• Ground fog in low-lying area
Aerosols
• Suspensions of particles having an effective diameter of less than 10 µm are
called aerosols.
• Some particles enter the atmosphere as solids (e.g., soil dust), and others are
formed in the atmosphere when gases such as sulfur dioxide condense into liquid
particles such as sulfates.
• Combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning are the principal anthropogenic
sources of aerosols. Natural sources of aerosols include wind-blown soil dust,
evaporation of sea-spray droplets, and volcanic eruptions.
• While the natural emission rates from these and other sources far exceeds
anthropogenic emissions, most of these particulates are so large that they quickly
drop out of the troposphere.
• Smaller particles, especially ones that reach the stratosphere, are much more
important in terms of their impact on climate as well as human health.
Aerosols
• Aerosols have characteristics that make them considerably different from the well-mixed,
long-lived greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, N2O and halocarbons.
• For one, they have atmospheric lifetimes that are measured in days or weeks in the
troposphere, and a few years in the stratosphere, while greenhouse gases have lifetimes
measured usually in decades, but for some, in thousands of years.
• The aerosols in the troposphere today are mostly particles that entered the atmosphere
within the past few days.
• That means aerosol concentrations can vary considerably from week to week and from
place to place.
• That short lifetime also implies that the radiative impacts of aerosols are likely to be
regional phenomena, centered around the industrialized areas of the world, whereas
greenhouse gas impacts are much more uniformly distributed around the globe.
• In fact, in some heavily industrialized parts of the world, the cooling caused by aerosols
can be greater than the warming due to greenhouse gases.
• That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that such an area would experience cooling,
since regional temperatures are so much affected by other factors.
Aerosols
• Aerosols are also different from most greenhouse gases in that
they cause both heating and cooling of the atmosphere
• they affect the Earth’s energy balance in three ways:
• they can reflect incoming solar radiation back into space, which
increases the Earth’s albedo;
• they can provide cloud condensation nuclei, which increases cloud
reflectivity and cloud lifetime, which also increases albedo; and
• carbonaceous particles such as soot from fossil-fuel combustion can
increase the atmospheric absorption of incoming solar energy
• Sulfates and white smoke increase the albedo by enhancing
atmospheric and cloud reflection, which helps cool the planet,
and solar absorption by black smoke causes warming.
Aerosols
• The term black carbon (BC) is used to describe that black
smoke, which consists of various carbonaceous products of
incomplete combustion, including chars, charcoals, and soots
Aerosols
• The direct effect of black carbon absorption of incoming solar energy,
warming the air itself, is amplified by its indirect effect as soot is
transported and deposited onto snow-covered areas.
• By making the snow darker, its albedo is reduced causing further
warming.
• And, as the soot-blackened snow melts, it exposes darker under
surfaces, further reducing albedo.
• These indirect albedo effects are estimated to more than double the
warming impact of black carbon, making it a very important
contributor to current global warming.
• Its importance, coupled with its extremely short atmospheric lifetime,
suggest reducing black carbon may be the quickest way to slow the
current rate of global warming