Measurements of open-water arctic ocean noise directionality and transport velocity

Measurements from bottom-mounted acoustic vector sensors, deployed seasonally between 2008 and 2014 on the shallow Beaufort Sea shelf along the Alaskan North Slope, are used to estimate the ambient sound pressure power spectral density, acoustic transport velocity of energy, and dominant azimuth between 25 and 450 Hz. Even during ice-free conditions, this region has unusual acoustic features when compared against other U.S. coastal regions. Two distinct regimes exist in the diffuse ambient noise environment: one with high pressure spectral density levels but low directionality, and another with lower spectral density levels but high directionality. The transition between the two states, which is invisible in traditional spectrograms, occurs between 73 and 79 dB re 1 μPa2/Hz at 100 Hz, with the transition region occurring at lower spectral levels at higher frequencies. Across a wide bandwidth, the high-directionality ambient noise consistently arrives from geographical azimuths between 0° and 30° from true north over multiple years and locations, with a seasonal interquartile range of 40° at low frequencies and high transport velocities. The long-term stability of this directional regime, which is believed to arise from the dominance of wind-driven sources along an east–west coastline, makes it an important feature of arctic ambient sound.