Tidal transports from satellite observations of earth’s magnetic field

Abstract

The tides are a major driver of global oceanic mixing. While global tidal elevations are very well observed by satellite altimetry, the global tidal transports are much less well known. For twenty years, magnetic signals induced by the ocean tides have been detectable in satellite magnetometer observations, such as Swarm or CHAMP. Here, we demonstrate how satellite magnetometer observations can be used to directly derive global ocean tidal transports. As an advantage over other tidal transport estimates, our tidal estimates base on very few and very loose constraints from numerical forward models.