Assessment of Tidal Range Changes in the North Sea From 1958 to 2014.

We document an exceptional large-spatial scale case of changes in tidal range in the North Sea, featuring pronounced trends between -2.3 mm/yr at tide gauges in the United Kingdom and up to 7 mm/yr in the German Bight between 1958 and 2014. These changes are spatially heterogeneous and driven by a superposition of local and large-scale processes within the basin. We use principal component analysis to separate large-scale signals appearing coherently over multiple stations from rather localized changes. We identify two leading principal components (PCs) that explain about 69% of tidal range changes in the entire North Sea including the divergent trend pattern along United Kingdom and German coastlines that reflects movement of the region's semidiurnal amphidromic areas. By applying numerical and statistical analyses, we can assign a baroclinic (PC1) and a barotropic large-scale signal (PC2), explaining a large part of the overall variance. A comparison between PC2 and tide gauge records along the European Atlantic coast, Iceland, and Canada shows significant correlations on time scales of less than 2 years, which points to an external and basin-wide forcing mechanism. By contrast, PC1 dominates in the southern North Sea and originates, at least in part, from stratification changes in nearby shallow waters. In particular, from an analysis of observed density profiles, we suggest that an increased strength and duration of the summer pycnocline has stabilized the water column against turbulent dissipation and allowed for higher tidal elevations at the coast.

Modeling ocean-induced rapid Earth rotation variations: an update.

We revisit the problem of modeling the ocean's contribution to rapid, non-tidal Earth rotation variations at periods of 2-120 days. Estimates of oceanic angular momentum (OAM, 2007-2011) are drawn from a suite of established circulation models and new numerical simulations, whose finest configuration is on a ∘ grid. We show that the OAM product by the Earth System Modeling Group at GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam has spurious short period variance in its equatorial motion terms, rendering the series a poor choice for describing oceanic signals in polar motion on time scales of less than ∼ 2 weeks. Accounting for OAM in rotation budgets from other models typically reduces the variance of atmosphere-corrected geodetic excitation by ∼ 54% for deconvolved polar motion and by ∼ 60% for length-of-day. Use of OAM from the ∘ model does provide for an additional reduction in residual variance such that the combined oceanic-atmospheric effect explains as much as 84% of the polar motion excitation at periods < 120 days. Employing statistical analysis and bottom pressure changes from daily Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment solutions, we highlight the tendency of ocean models run at a 1 ∘ grid spacing to misrepresent topographically constrained dynamics in some deep basins of the Southern Ocean, which has adverse effects on OAM estimates taken along the 90 ∘ meridian. Higher model resolution thus emerges as a sensible target for improving the oceanic component in broader efforts of Earth system modeling for geodetic purposes.

Long-Term Earth-Moon Evolution With High-Level Orbit and Ocean Tide Models.

Tides and Earth-Moon system evolution are coupled over geological time. Tidal energy dissipation on Earth slows E a r t h ' s rotation rate, increases obliquity, lunar orbit semi-major axis and eccentricity, and decreases lunar inclination. Tidal and core-mantle boundary dissipation within the Moon decrease inclination, eccentricity and semi-major axis. Here we integrate the Earth-Moon system backwards for 4.5 Ga with orbital dynamics and explicit ocean tide models that are "high-level" (i.e., not idealized). To account for uncertain plate tectonic histories, we employ Monte Carlo simulations, with tidal energy dissipation rates (normalized relative to astronomical forcing parameters) randomly selected from ocean tide simulations with modern ocean basin geometry and with 55, 116, and 252 Ma reconstructed basin paleogeometries. The normalized dissipation rates depend upon basin geometry and E a r t h ' s rotation rate. Faster Earth rotation generally yields lower normalized dissipation rates. The Monte Carlo results provide a spread of possible early values for the Earth-Moon system parameters. Of consequence for ocean circulation and climate, absolute (un-normalized) ocean tidal energy dissipation rates on the early Earth may have exceeded t o d a y ' s rate due to a closer Moon. Prior to ∼ 3 Ga , evolution of inclination and eccentricity is dominated by tidal and core-mantle boundary dissipation within the Moon, which yield high lunar orbit inclinations in the early Earth-Moon system. A drawback for our results is that the semi-major axis does not collapse to near-zero values at 4.5 Ga, as indicated by most lunar formation models. Additional processes, missing from our current efforts, are discussed as topics for future investigation.

The Global S[Formula: see text] Tide in Earth's Nutation.

Diurnal S[Formula: see text] tidal oscillations in the coupled atmosphere-ocean system induce small perturbations of Earth's prograde annual nutation, but matching geophysical model estimates of this Sun-synchronous rotation signal with the observed effect in geodetic Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) data has thus far been elusive. The present study assesses the problem from a geophysical model perspective, using four modern-day atmospheric assimilation systems and a consistently forced barotropic ocean model that dissipates its energy excess in the global abyssal ocean through a parameterized tidal conversion scheme. The use of contemporary meteorological data does, however, not guarantee accurate nutation estimates per se; two of the probed datasets produce atmosphere-ocean-driven S[Formula: see text] terms that deviate by more than 30 [Formula: see text]as (microarcseconds) from the VLBI-observed harmonic of [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text]as. Partial deficiencies of these models in the diurnal band are also borne out by a validation of the air pressure tide against barometric in situ estimates as well as comparisons of simulated sea surface elevations with a global network of S[Formula: see text] tide gauge determinations. Credence is lent to the global S[Formula: see text] tide derived from the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) and the operational model of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). When averaged over a temporal range of 2004 to 2013, their nutation contributions are estimated to be [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text]as (MERRA) and [Formula: see text] [Formula: see text]as (ECMWF operational), thus being virtually equivalent with the VLBI estimate. This remarkably close agreement will likely aid forthcoming nutation theories in their unambiguous a priori account of Earth's prograde annual celestial motion.