Secular Changes in the Tide of the Gulf of Maine

Details Secular Changes in the Tide of the Gulf of Maine Secular Changes in the Tide of the Gulf of Maine

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmos24b..04r&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #OS24B-04

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4560 Surface Waves And Tides (1222)

Scientific paper

For the past century the amplitude of the principal semidiurnal lunar tide in the Gulf of Maine has been dramatically increasing. For example, at Eastport, Maine, the trend in M2 amplitude is 13 cm/century, comparable to the rise in mean sea level. At the same time the solar tide S2 has been decreasing. These tidal changes, which occur throughout the entire Gulf, presumably reflect changes in basin configuration--- geometry, depth, or both. Tidal models that account for Holocene sea level rise do predict an amplification of M2, but much smaller than the currently observed trends. An increasing M2 and decreasing S2 could reflect a shift of the gulf's dominant resonant frequency toward M2 and away from S2. This seems unlikely, however, because Garrett and others have shown that the primary resonance of the Gulf of Maine lies near or below the frequency of N2, so any shift should affect M2 and S2 similarly. Preliminary analysis suggests a small perturbation in the Q of the gulf tide, thus pointing to dissipation rather the frequency-shifting as the cause. In addition, the changes in S2 appear to be induced by a far more widespread decrease in S2 amplitudes throughout much of the northeast Atlantic Ocean, extending at least as far as Bermuda. The cause of this is not understood, but radiational effects in S2 can be ruled out because similar changes occur in K2. We review the evidence---primarily from long tide-gauge time series---for these changes in tidal "constants" and the status of our still-incomplete theories of causative mechanisms.

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