Estimates of Baroclinic Tidal Sea Level and Currents from Lagrangian Drifters and Satellite Altimetry

Abstract

Internal waves generated by the interaction of the surface tides with topography are known to propagate long distances and lead to observable effects such as sea level variability, ocean currents, and mixing. In an effort to describe and predict these waves, the present work is concerned with using geographically-distributed data from satellite altimeters and drifting buoys to estimate and map the baroclinic sea level associated with the M2, S2, N2, K1, and O1 tides. A new mapping methodology is developed, based on a mixed L1/L2-norm optimization, and compared with previously-developed methods for tidal estimation from altimeter data. The altimeter and drifter data are considered separately in their roles for estimating tides and for cross-validating estimates obtained with independent data. Estimates obtained from altimetry and drifter data are found to agree remarkably well in regions where the drifter trajectories are spatially dense; however, heterogeneity of the drifter trajectories is a disadvantage when they are considered alone for tidal estimation. When the different data types are combined by using geodetic-mission altimetry to cross-validate estimates obtained with either exact-repeat altimetry or drifter data, and subsequently averaging the latter estimates, the estimates significantly improve on the previously-published HRET8.1 model, as measured by their utility for predicting sea level and surface currents in the open ocean. The methodology has been applied to estimate the annual modulations of M2, which are found to have much smaller amplitudes compared to those reported in HRET8.1, and suggest that the latter estimates of these tides were not reliable.