Program on the Environment

Military activity over the Olympic Peninsula has been systematically increasing over the past decade predominately due to the growth in training for personnel out of the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station (WINAS). Although naval flights have been operated in this region for many decades, the Boeing EA-18G aircraft or “Growlers”, which has been in great use for the past one to two years, has been classified as being a pivot point in the level of noise pollution experienced by visitors and residents living in close proximity to the aircraft runway. A larger concern regarding this issue is that it has been projected that the use of Growlers will increase approximately 30% within the next several years. The purpose of this study was to determine how frequently the US military practice the act of flying growler jets by examining audio files gathered by the University of Washington- SAFS within the years of 2017 and 2018. To successfully accomplish this task, I observed the spectrogram of the audio file recordings and categorized flight events based on the shape and frequency of the spectrogram. The three flight events that were identified in all of the audio files were: growler jets, commercial jets, and propeller planes. Results revealed that amongst all of the three classified events, growlers were being flown at a significantly higher rate. This is a particular concern primarily because growlers emit noise at a greater frequency, which can ultimately lead to detrimental adverse effects in the short and long term.