A noise-level estimator for a noise suppressor includes a power smoother filter providing smoothed power estimates in timeslices, a minimum follower that represents the lowest smoothed input power, and a maximum follower that represents the highest smoothed input power, the followers subject to leakage factors. The estimator has a speech probability detector receiving outputs of the power smoother and minimum follower; a nonstationary noise detector receiving outputs of both followers; and an estimator receiving outputs of the nonstationary noise detector, power smoother, and speech probability detector and providing a noise estimate. The method includes smoothing intensity of the frequency band; tracking minima and maxima of the smoothed intensity; determining speech-absence probability from the minima and the intensity; determining a nonstationary noise measure from the tracked minima and maxima; determining presence of nonstationary noise; and estimating noise from speech-absence probability, the nonstationary noise measure, and the intensity.