Results of the harmonic analysis of tidal observations

Abstract

The harmonic analysis of continuous tidal records, inaugurated by a Committee of the British Association in 1868, has now been carried out at a considerable number of ports. Some of the earlier results were collected together in the Reports to the Association in 1872 and 1876, and in a paper by Sir W. Thomson and Captain Evans, read before the Association in 1878, but the largest mass of data is contained in the tide tables now being annually published for the Indian ports under the authority of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for India. The Report of the last Committee of the British Association, published in the volume for the meeting at Southport in 1883, is entirely theoretical, and has been adopted in India as a manual of the method of harmonic analysis. It is there shown how the results of the analysis are to be presented in a form appropriate either for theoretical treatment or for mechanical prediction by the instrument of the Indian Government in London. It is also shown how the scattered results, referred to above, may be reduced to the form which has been adopted as a standard. Major Baird has collected the whole of the Indian results, and those contained in the Reports of 1872 and 1876, and, by the aid of his staff of computers at Poona, has reduced them to this standard form. The greater part of the annexed tables is the result of this work.