Classical tidal harmonic analysis including error estimates in MATLAB using TDE

Abstract

A standard part of any oceanic pressure gauge or current meter analysis is the separation of tidal from non-tidal components of the signal. The tidal signal can either be discarded, or its characteristics described in some fashion useful for further analysis. Although tidal signals can be removed by standard high or bandpass filtering techniques, their relatively deterministic character and large amplitude make special techniques more effective. In classical harmonic analysis, the tidal signal is modelled as the sum of a finite set of sinusoids at specific frequencies related to astronomical parameters. A set of programs has been written in MATLAB to (a) perform classical harmonic analysis for periods of about 1 year or shorter, (b) account for (some) unresolved constituents using nodal corrections, and (c) compute confidence intervals for the analyzed components. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.