egbert@coas.oregonstate.edu
A large fraction of the variance in many oceanographic variables is due to tides. As a result, for many practical applications in the marine environment (e.g., shipping, modeling of pollution dispersal) accurate maps of tidal currents or elevations are often indispensable. Knowledge of tides is of value in many scientific studies as well. Here the tides are often seen as a nuisance that must be removed from the data prior to studies of longer period oceanographic variations. For a fixed observation site, such as a semi-permanent mooring, tides can be removed by filtering of time series. With data taken from moving platforms (e.g., ships, Lagrangian drifters, satellites) spatial and temporal variations are aliased, rendering a simple filtering scheme untenable, and again requiring accurate maps of tidal fields. Tides are of course not just a source of noise. For example, studies of ocean microstructure have shown a correlation of turbulent dissipation rates with tidal cycles and there is increasing evidence that tides may provide a significant source of energy for mixing the deep ocean. For studies of this sort a detailed knowledge of the tidal fields is again desirable.
Our global and regional models of barotropic tide are available for free donwload - use menu on left to navigate the page. To refer to our models in your publications please use the citation:
Gary D. Egbert and Svetlana Y. Erofeeva, 2002: Efficient Inverse Modeling of Barotropic Ocean Tides. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 19, 183204.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0426(2002)019<0183:EIMOBO>2.0.CO;2
