New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Observed and modelled tidal currents in the New Zealand region

BASIL R. STANTON

National Institute of Water & Atmospheric
 Research Ltd
P. O. Box 14 901
Wellington, New Zealand

DEREK G. GORING

National Institute of Water & Atmospheric
 Research Ltd
P. O. Box 8602
Christchurch, New Zealand

ROBERT G. BELL

National Institute of Water & Atmospheric
 Research Ltd
P. O. Box 11 115
Hamilton, New Zealand

Abstract  Tidal currents derived from current meter measurements are compared with the output from a barotropic tidal model of the New Zealand region. For the semi-diurnal constituents there was very good agreement for the M2 tide and good agreement for the S2 tide. For the diurnal constituents (K1, O1) it was found that as the amplitude of the constituents decreased so did both the model/observation agreement and the accuracy of the observed tidal ellipse parameters. Consequently it was not possible to decide whether differences arose through shortcomings in the model or in the data. However, the overall performance of the model as a prognostic tool for ocean tidal current simulation appears to be good.

Keywords  tidal currents; numerical model; current measurements; tidal ellipses

M00025

Received 29 May 2000; accepted 8 September 2000

NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF MARINE AND FRESHWATER RESEARCH, 2001, VOL. 35: 397-415 0028-8330/01/3502-0397 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2001

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (3758K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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