Formulation of a new explicit tidal scheme in ocean general circulation model

Tides play an important role in ocean energy transfer and mixing, and provide major energy for maintaining thermohaline circulation. This study proposes a new explicit tidal scheme and assesses its performance in a global ocean model. Instead of using empirical specifications of tidal amplitudes and frequencies, the new scheme directly uses the positions of the Moon and Sun in a global ocean model to incorporate tides. Compared with the traditional method that has specified tidal constituents, the new scheme can better simulate the diurnal and spatial characteristics of the tidal potential of spring and neap tides as well as the spatial patterns and magnitudes of major tidal constituents (K1 and M2). It significantly reduces the total errors of eight tidal constituents (with the exception of N2 and Q1) in the traditional explicit tidal scheme. Relative to the control simulation without tides, both the new and traditional tidal schemes can lead to better dynamic sea level (DSL) simulation in the North Atlantic, reducing significant negative biases in this region. The new tidal scheme also shows smaller positive bias than the traditional scheme in the Southern Ocean. The new scheme is suited to calculate regional distributions of sea level height in addition to tidal mixing.

A COMPARISON BETWEEN TIDAL CONSTITUENTS DERIVED FROM SATELLITE ALTIMETRY AND IN-SITU DATA AROUND PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Satellite altimetry technology has been widely used in exploring Earth’s Ocean activities. Achieving a remarkable accuracy in measuring sea level for ocean tide analysis has led the local researchers to investigate more details on tidal behaviour in the regional area. This study is an attempt to assess the reliability of derived tidal constituents between satellite radar altimetry and in-situ data which is referred to as coastal tide gauges. Three satellite missions denoted as TOPEX class missions namely TOPEX, Jason-1, and Jason-2 were used to derive along-track sea surface height (SSH) time series over 23 years. Besides, four selected coastal tide gauges were used for tidal analysis and validation where the tidal data have at least 19 years of hourly observation. Derivation of tidal constituents from both satellite altimetry and tide gauges were executed by adopting the harmonic analysis method. The comparisons were made by calculating the Root Mean Square Misfit (RMSmisfit) of each tidal constituent between the nearest altimetry point to the tide gauges. After RMSmisfit, Root Sum Square (RSS) values of tidal constituents at each tide gauge were also calculated. The results displayed the RMSmisfit of tidal constituents agreed well with the selected tide gauges which are within 10 cm except for M2 constituents which recorded 10.2 cm. Pelabuhan Kelang tide gauge station showed the highest RSS value followed by Pulau Langkawi which recorded 21.2 cm and 9.8 cm, respectively. In conclusion, overall results can be inferred that the satellite-derived tidal constituents are likely to have good agreement with the selected tide gauge stations. Nevertheless, further analysis should be executed in determining high precision satellite-derived tidal constituents, especially in the complex regional area.

Study on Hydrodynamic Characteristics and Environmental Response in Shantou Offshore Area

As a coastal trading city in China, Shantou has complex terrain and changeable sea conditions in its coastal waters. In order to better protect the coastal engineering and social property along the coast, based on the numerical simulation method, this paper constructed a detailed hydrodynamic model of the Shantou sea area, and the measured tide elevation and tidal current were used to verify the accuracy of the model. Based on the simulation results, the tide elevation and current in the study area were analyzed, including the flood and ebb tides of astronomical spring tide, the flood and ebb tides of astronomical neap tide, the high tide, and the low tide. In order to find the main tidal constituent types in this sea, the influence of different tidal constituents on tide elevation and tidal current in the study area was analyzed. At the same time, the storm surge model of the study area was constructed, and the flow field under Typhoon “Mangkhut” in the study area was simulated by using the real recorded data. Typhoon wind fields with different recurrence periods and intensities were constructed to simulate the change in the flow field, the sea water level, and the disaster situation along the coast. The results showed that under normal sea conditions, the sea water flows from southwest to northeast at flood tide and the flow direction is opposite at ebb tide. The tidal range is large in the northwest and small in the southeast of the study area. The tides in the study area are mainly controlled by M2, S2, K1, and O1 tidal constituents, but N2, K2, P1, and Q1 tidal constituents have significant effects on the high water level. The water level caused by typhoons increases significantly along the coast of Shantou City. In the west area of the Rong River estuary, a typhoon with a lower central pressure than 910 hPa may induce a water increase of more than 2 m.

Regional Evaluation of Minor Tidal Constituents for Improved Estimation of Ocean Tides

Satellite altimetry observations have provided a significant contribution to the understanding of global sea surface processes, particularly allowing for advances in the accuracy of ocean tide estimations. Currently, almost three decades of satellite altimetry are available which can be used to improve the understanding of ocean tides by allowing for the estimation of an increased number of minor tidal constituents. As ocean tide models continue to improve, especially in the coastal region, these minor tides become increasingly important. Generally, admittance theory is used by most global ocean tide models to infer several minor tides from the major tides when creating the tidal correction for satellite altimetry. In this paper, regional studies are conducted to compare the use of admittance theory to direct estimations of minor tides from the EOT20 model to identify which minor tides should be directly estimated and which should be inferred. The results of these two approaches are compared to two global tide models (TiME and FES2014) and in situ tide gauge observations. The analysis showed that of the eight tidal constituents studied, half should be inferred (2N2, ϵ2, MSF and T2), while the remaining four tides (J1, L2, μ2 and ν2) should be directly estimated to optimise the ocean tidal correction. Furthermore, for certain minor tides, the other two tide models produced better results than the EOT model, suggesting that improvements can be made to the tidal correction made by EOT when incorporating tides from the two other tide models. Following on from this, a new approach of merging tidal constituents from different tide models to produce the ocean tidal correction for satellite altimetry that benefits from the strengths of the respective models is presented. This analysis showed that the tidal correction created based on the recommendations of the tide gauge analysis provided the highest reduction of sea-level variance. Additionally, the combination of the EOT20 model with the minor tides of the TiME and FES2014 model did not significantly increase the sea-level variance. As several additional minor tidal constituents are available from the TiME model, this opens the door for further investigations into including these minor tides and optimising the tidal correction for improved studies of the sea surface from satellite altimetry and in other applications, such as gravity field modelling.

EOT20: a global ocean tide model from multi-mission satellite altimetry

EOT20 is the latest in a series of empirical ocean tide (EOT) models derived using residual tidal analysis of multi-mission satellite altimetry at DGFI-TUM. The amplitudes and phases of 17 tidal constituents are provided on a global 0.125∘ grid based on empirical analysis of seven satellite altimetry missions and four extended missions. The EOT20 model shows significant improvements compared to the previous iteration of the global model (EOT11a) throughout the ocean, particularly in the coastal and shelf regions, due to the inclusion of more recent satellite altimetry data as well as more missions, the use of the updated FES2014 tidal model as a reference to estimated residual signals, the inclusion of the ALES retracker and improved coastal representation. In the validation of EOT20 using tide gauges and ocean bottom pressure data, these improvements in the model compared to EOT11a are highlighted with the root sum square (RSS) of the eight major tidal constituents improving by ∼ 1.4 cm for the entire global ocean with the major improvement in RSS (∼ 2.2 cm) occurring in the coastal region. Concerning the other global ocean tidal models, EOT20 shows an improvement of ∼ 0.2 cm in RSS compared to the closest model (FES2014) in the global ocean. Variance reduction analysis was conducted comparing the results of EOT20 with FES2014 and EOT11a using the Jason-2, Jason-3 and SARAL satellite altimetry missions. From this analysis, EOT20 showed a variance reduction for all three satellite altimetry missions with the biggest improvement in variance occurring in the coastal region. These significant improvements, particularly in the coastal region, provide encouragement for the use of the EOT20 model as a tidal correction for satellite altimetry in sea-level research. All ocean and load tide data from the model can be freely accessed at https://doi.org/10.17882/79489 (Hart-Davis et al., 2021). The tide gauges from the TICON dataset used in the validation of the tide model, are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.896587 (Piccioni et al., 2018a).

The Impact of the Mesoscale Ocean Variability on the Estimation of Tidal Harmonic Constants Based on Satellite Altimeter Data in the South China Sea

The estimation accuracy of tidal harmonic constants is of great significance to maritime traffic and port construction. However, due to the long sampling period of satellite altimeters, tidal signals alias the mesoscale ocean frequencies. As a result, the harmonic analysis is affected by mesoscale environmental noise. In this study, the influence of the mesoscale ocean variability (MOV) on the estimation of tidal harmonic constants was quantified by analyzing 25 years of altimeter data from the Topex/Poseidon (T/P) and Jason satellites in the South China Sea (SCS). The results indicated that the absolute amplitude differences (AADs) of the eight major tidal constituents before and after the mesoscale variability correction (MVC) were generally within 10 mm, and most were within 6 mm. For the relative impact, M2, O1, and K1 were not obviously affected by the MOV because of their large amplitudes, and the AADs generally accounted for less than ±10% of the amplitudes. As a tidal constituent with amplitude less than 2 cm in the SCS, the amplitude of K2 was significantly affected by the MOV, with the ratios of the AADs to its own amplitudes ranging from −64.79% to 95.99% in space. In terms of phase, the K2 tide was most affected by the MOV: 63% of the data points before and after correction were over ±5°, and the maximum and minimum values were 86.46° and −176.27°, respectively. The absolute phase differences of other tidal constituents before and after the MVC were generally concentrated within ±5°. The impact of the MOV on the evolution of tidal amplitudes in the SCS was also explored. It was found that the MOV can cause pseudo-rapid temporal variations of tidal amplitudes in some regions of the SCS.

Long-period solar annual and semiannual tidal contributions to the lowest normal low water in seas surrounding China

As the chart datum of China, the lowest normal low water (LNLW) was calculated using three tidal constituents, major (Q1, O1, P1, K1, N2, M2, S2 and K2), shallow water (M4, MS4 and M6) and long-period tidal (Sa and Ssa). The construction of a tidal datum is mainly concerned with improvements in the major tidal constituents, and the contribution of the long-period tidal component has been generally neglected. In this study, long-term tide gauge observations and multi-mission satellite altimetry data were used to investigate the spatial distribution of the long-period tidal contribution in Chinese seas and analyze the relative long-period tidal contribution rate into four regions. The results showed that the mean contribution in Chinese seas is 7.63 %, with the largest contribution in the Bohai Sea (11.33 %) and smallest in the East China Sea (5.27 %). Differences between tide gauge and satellite-derived results were compared in detail. The Sa and M2 tidal amplitudes are the main factors affecting the long-period tidal contribution to the LNLW. The relative long-period tidal contribution can be up to 34.18 % when tide gauge observations record small M2 and large Sa amplitudes. These results indicate that the long-period tidal constituent cannot be neglected in the establishment of the LNLW datum. Therefore, to improve tidal datum precision, precise extraction and accuracy assessments of long-period tidal constituents should be a research focus.