CoAuthors

Florianne Sailly (CLS, France); Florent Lyard (LEGOS, France)

Thanks to its current accuracy and maturity, altimetry is considered as a fully operational observing system dedicated to scientific and operational applications. In order to access the targeted ocean signal, altimeter measurements are corrected for several geophysical parameters among which the ocean tide correction is one of the most critical. The accuracy of tidal models has been much improved during the last 20 years, but some errors still remain mainly in shelf seas and in polar regions.
In this context, a new global tidal model, FES 2014, has been developed and finalized in 2016 and it is now available on AVISO website :
https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/en/data/products/auxiliary-products/global-tide-fes.html. FES2014 takes advantage of longer altimeter time series, improved modelling and data assimilation techniques, a corrected bathymetry field, a higher resolution mesh and a larger assimilation dataset including tidal gauges. The model tidal elevations have been extensively validated using in situ and altimetric measurements, showing a great improvement in coastal and shallow water regions. A validation of tidal currents has also been performed around Australia using ADCP data.
In this study, we use HFR radar databases from MARACOOS network to perform comparisons with FES2014 tidal currents on the Eastern coast of the US. A comparison with another global ocean model TPXO8 and some in situ measurements is also proposed.