Residual ocean tide signals from satellite altimetry, GRACE gravity fields, and hydrodynamic modelling

Abstract

Improvements of a global state-of-the art ocean tide model are identified and quantified by applying three independent approaches, namely (i) empirical ocean tide analysis of multimission altimeter data, (ii) evaluation of GRACE data and gravity field models and (iii) high resolution hydrodynamic modelling. Although these approaches have different capabilities to sense ocean tides they obtain results which are basically consistent one with each other. The analysis of altimeter data clearly identifies significant residual amplitudes over shallow water for all major diurnal and semidiurnal constituents and the non-linear tide M4. GRACE data and the time-series of monthly gravity field models exhibit - on a larger scale - residual ocean tide signals over much the same areas. The analysis of dynamic residuals of hydrodynamic modelling with data assimilation proves the validity of linear dynamics in the deep ocean and shows correlation of dynamic residuals with energy dissipation in these areas. © 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 RAS.