Tips & tricks: keep your phone out of the wind

In our database you filled with aviation noise measurements we see sometimes strange curves. We suspect that these are caused by users who try to measure the aviation noise while standing in the wind.

‘Regular’ measurements show a relatively slow upcoming and dying noise profile. But some of the measurements show more than one top and bottom. We will flag these measurements to distinguish them from the regular registrations.

We will keep these ‘odd’ measurements in our database, to give scientists the chance to analyze them, but we will not show them in our regular overview on the upcoming website. Read more >

First preliminary result from Explane app

The thousands of aviation noise measurements from users of the Explane app have led to a first preliminary result. This could lead to broader noise corridors and thus even more impacted homes.

Measurements show that planes make (much) more noise when they fly over a densely populated area with lots of ‘hard’ materials like bricks and asphalt. The same planes show a lower noise level in an area with ‘softer’ materials like fields, trees and sand grounds.

Airport calculations of noise nuisance do not account for these differences in environments.

If this first result is proved after further research, airplanes cause much more noise pollution in urbanized areas, causing much more nuisance than what was calculated until now by aviation sources. Read more >

Aviation CO2 emissions: the real story

More than once we read stories from the aviation industry that their CO2 emissions do not exceed 2% of a country’s total. We did not trust these fairy tales and decided to do some calculations on the Dutch emissions. Spoiler alert: aviation is not telling the truth.

Following the most recent numbers the Dutch Bureau for Statistics CBS announced in Holland 3.75 billion kilograms of kerosene was sold in 2016.

Burning 1 kg kerosene gives 3.14 kg of CO2, resulting from the chemical formula to transform one CH2-group (fuel) with atomic weight 14 to a CO2-molecule with atomic weight 44 (44 devided by 14 equals 3.14). Read more >