Improved Sea Surface Height over the Patagonian Continental Shelf

MARTIN SARACENO AND LAURA RUIZ ETCHEVERRY

Venecia

Simposio; Oceanobs'09 Sustained Ocean Observations and Information for Sociaty; 2009

Sea Surface Height (SSH) as measured by satellites has become a powerful tool for oceanographic and climate related studies. Whether in the open ocean a good accuracy has been achieved, a more energetic dynamics and a number of calibration problems have limited applications over continental shelves and near the coast. Tide amplitudes in the Patagonian shelf are among the highest in the world ocean, reaching up to 12 m at specific locations. This fact highlights the relevance of the accuracy of the tidal correction that must be applied to the satellite data to be useful in the region. In this work, five global tide models and two regional models are compared to available tide-gauges distributed along the Argentinean coast. The seven models shown that the root-sum-square of the misfit of the five main tidal components (M2, S2, N2, O1 and K1) is higher than 58 cm. In particular it is shown that all the models considered have a poor representation of N2. A better accuracy is needed to estimate non-tidal currents from satellite altimetry in the region, which are on the order of 10 cm/s or less. Comparison and discussion of the origin of the differences obtained within the tide models are presented.