Effect of long term tidal constituents on mean sea level trend during El-Nino and La-Nina phenomena

Abstract

There are many factors that influence the change of the tidal constituent pattern. The factors can be classified as astronomical factors and non- astronomical factors. The astronomical factors involve the gravitational force attraction by the moon and sun. The distance of sun and moon influence the gravitational attractions that are produced by the moon and sun towards earth surface. Non-astronomical factors involved the movements of currents, waves, temperature and so on which is cause by the phenomenon such as El-Nino, La-Nina. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of these phenomena towards the pattern of tidal constituent during the phenomenon on several stations that have been chosen. The difference stations were chose due to the change in the position of celestial body. In addition, tidal data for several stations were processed using the UTM Tidal Analysis and Prediction Software (μ-TAPS). Based on the tidal data that has been processed, the graphs were plotted for the predicted data and observed data to compare the different pattern between the data. The tidal data that has been processed were used to analyse the pattern of tidal constituents based on the changing amplitude of M2, S2, K1, O1, Sa, Ssa, Mm, Mf and MSf.