EXPERIMENTS IN TIDAL MASS CONSERVATION

A common feature of theoretical ocean tide models is their failure to conserve mass over the oceans. This failure distorts the tidal solution and imparts ambiguity to the calculation of tidal effects on gravity, crustal loading, and Earth rotation; for example, predicted effects of long‐period tides on rotation could be uncertain by up to 50 per cent in magnitude and 100 per cent in phase. Using the spherical harmonic tide theory developed by Dickman (1989), the influence of various global conservation constraints on the tidal solution is explored. an ocean‐wide mass conservation constraint, implemented using Lagrange multipliers, produces a realistic and significantly more accurate and unambiguous tidal solution. Copyright © 1990, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved