A Possible Source Mechanism for Mountain-Associated Infrasound

Abstract

Mountain-associated sound is a well known natural acoustic signal that can be traced back to windy mountainous areas. Direct monitoring in such regions reveals much low-phase-velocity wind noise: in this paper we suggest that scattering of these wind oscillations from terrain irregularities produces at least part of the infrasound signal. An idealized (two-dimensional) calculation shows that the scattering mechanism is rather efficient. However, the more intricate question of how much infrasound could be expected in this manner from a real mountain range is not investigated.