Ocean tides in the northern North Atlantic and adjacent seas from ERS 1 altimetry

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Abstract
Twenty months of ERS 1 35‐day repeat altimeter data containing 18 repeat cycles have been used to estimate the major diurnal and semidiurnal ocean tide signals in the northern parts of the North Atlantic and adjacent seas. ERS 1 provides valuable information when investigating ocean tides, owing to the repeated dense spatial sampling. However, several tidal constituents are extremely difficult to resolve using conventional harmonic analysis with the chosen sun syncronous orbit. Instead, temporal analysis at each crossover location is applied using a modified form of the orthotide formulation, which simultaneously solves for the diurnal and semidiurnal species as well as for the annual signal. The use of the response formalism ensures that the sun syncronous component S2 can be resolved, although this component is “frozen” in the orbit. Maps of the M2, S2 and K1 tidal amplitudes and phases in 0.5°×0.5° grids are presented and are seen to compare favorably with measurements at 68 pelagic tide gauges provided by the International Association for Physical Sciences of the Ocean. The major tidal constituents of the ERS 1 derived model are also in close agreement with the improved Flather (1981) ocean tide model for the northwest European continental shelf area, as well as a numerical model for the Arctic and Nordic Seas by Gjevik and Straume (1989).

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