Tides and sea‐level variability in the south‐west Pacific from TOPEX/Poseidon

Abstract

A harmonic‐analysis technique is used to compute tidal amplitudes and phases over the south‐west Pacific Ocean from the first 300 cycles (up to November 2000) of TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimetry. The analysis is performed along groundtracks and at track crossover locations and the resultant harmonics are shown to compare favourably with those from open‐coast sea‐level gauges and from regional and global tidal models. Small‐scale oscillations ( 2 internal tide generation, or aliasing between K 1 and semi‐annual signals. Tidal harmonics derived from satellite altimetry were used to improve the open‐sea boundary forcing for a limited‐area tidal model and produce a better validation with coastal sea‐level gauges.

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