Hart-Davis, Michael G; Dettmering, Denise; Seitz, Florian (2022): TICON: Tidal Constants [dataset bibliography]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.946889

Ocean tides, the sea surface fluctuations caused by the gravitational attraction of the Moon and the Sun, are one of the most important oceanographic processes. They have intrigued scientists for centuries, with the development of tide gauges in the early 1800s providing valuable insights into the physical mechanisms behind tide-induced sea-level changes. Since then, tide gauges continue to be developed and deployed globally and continue to be of value to tidal studies as well as for other coastal processes such as storm surges and sea-level rise.

The temporal changes in the ocean surface due to tides can be decomposed into a number of harmonic constants called tidal constants or constituents. Accurate knowledge of these tidal constants is vital in providing precise estimations of the full ocean tidal signal. In this regard, a dataset of TIdal CONstants (TICON) has been derived at DGFI-TUM using tide gauges from the ​​Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis (GESLA, www.gesla.org; Haigh et al 2021) database.

These tidal constants are derived through least-squares-based harmonic analysis of sea level time series. By default, TICON provides the amplitude, phase and their respective standard deviation for all constituents within the database. Additional information about the tide gauge data used to derive these constituents is also provided, such as the temporal range, data gaps and data sources. More details about the processing techniques as well as the validation of the techniques used can be found in Piccioni et al (2019).