A COMPARISON BETWEEN TIDAL CONSTITUENTS DERIVED FROM SATELLITE ALTIMETRY AND IN-SITU DATA AROUND PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

Abstract

Satellite altimetry technology has been widely used in exploring Earth’s Ocean activities. Achieving a remarkable accuracy in measuring sea level for ocean tide analysis has led the local researchers to investigate more details on tidal behaviour in the regional area. This study is an attempt to assess the reliability of derived tidal constituents between satellite radar altimetry and in-situ data which is referred to as coastal tide gauges. Three satellite missions denoted as TOPEX class missions namely TOPEX, Jason-1, and Jason-2 were used to derive along-track sea surface height (SSH) time series over 23 years. Besides, four selected coastal tide gauges were used for tidal analysis and validation where the tidal data have at least 19 years of hourly observation. Derivation of tidal constituents from both satellite altimetry and tide gauges were executed by adopting the harmonic analysis method. The comparisons were made by calculating the Root Mean Square Misfit (RMSmisfit) of each tidal constituent between the nearest altimetry point to the tide gauges. After RMSmisfit, Root Sum Square (RSS) values of tidal constituents at each tide gauge were also calculated. The results displayed the RMSmisfit of tidal constituents agreed well with the selected tide gauges which are within 10 cm except for M2 constituents which recorded 10.2 cm. Pelabuhan Kelang tide gauge station showed the highest RSS value followed by Pulau Langkawi which recorded 21.2 cm and 9.8 cm, respectively. In conclusion, overall results can be inferred that the satellite-derived tidal constituents are likely to have good agreement with the selected tide gauge stations. Nevertheless, further analysis should be executed in determining high precision satellite-derived tidal constituents, especially in the complex regional area.