Large radiational S2 tides in the East China Sea

Abstract

S2 ocean tide, as one of the most important semi-diurnal constituents, is composed of astronomical S2 tide originated from gravitational forcing and radiational S2 tide derived from solar radiation. Although there are lots of researches which have explored the features of radiational S2 tides in the globe, less known and less discussed, are the radiational S2 tides in the East China Sea due to lack of water level observations. In present study, radiational S2 tides in the East China Sea are estimated and discussed via the combination of 39 coastal tide gauges and EOT20 tidal model derived from multi-satellite altimeter records. We find that radiational S2 tides obtained from tide gauges and satellite-derived EOT20 model are roughly consistent in the East China Sea: (1) The largest radiational S2 amplitude can be as high as 14 cm. (2) Radiational and astronomical S2 tidal amplitudes are large in the coastal zones but small in the open sea. (3) Radiational S2 amplitudes are ∼12% of astronomical S2 amplitudes while phase differences between radiational and astronomical S2 tides are ∼114°. The inconsistency between coastal tide gauges and EOT20 model in coastal zones should be induced by the temporal evolution of tides and the inaccuracy of satellite altimeter observations in this region. Furthermore, the methods used in the East China Sea can be easily applied to other sea areas, except diurnal resonant sea areas where the smooth nature of semi-diurnal admittances may be corrupted by nonlinear interactions between anomalously large diurnal tides.