An approach suggested by Westervelt [3rd Int. Congr. Acoust., Stuttgart, 1959] has previously been used to predict with remarkable accuracy the excess absorption due to nonlinear effects in a plane, traveling sound wave. The same approach is applied here to spherically diverging sound waves. A number of cases of practical importance in underwater acoustics are evaluated and compared with other theoretical results.Subject Classification: [43]25.22; [43]30.75.