Age of tide
From The Encyclopedia of Earth
Oceans and seas (main)
March 29, 2010, 12:00 am
November 12, 2011, 8:14 am
The age of tide is the delay, usually a day or two, between full and new moons (when the equilibrium semi–diurnal tide is maximum) and the following spring tides. This terminology was first used to refer to this phenomenon by English scientist William Whewell in 1843, although Defant referred to it as “spring retardation” (in 1961) and Wood later (in 1978) used the terms “age of the phase inequality” and “age of the diurnal equality” to refer to, respectively, the ages of the semi–diurnal and diurnal tides. This delay is caused by frictional energy dissipation in coastal seas, although a localized increase in the age of tide is also a good indication of resonances at a given location.
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See Also
Further Reading
- Physical Oceanography Index
- T. S. Murty and M. I. El-Sabh. The age of tides. Oceanogr. Mar. Biol. Ann. Rev., 23:11–103, 1985.
- Albert Defant. Physical Oceanography: Vol. I. MacMillan, N.Y., 1961.
- Gustav Wex (ritter von.) and Godfrey Weitzel (tr). 1881. First treatise on the decrease of water in springs, creeks, and rivers: contemporaneously with an increase in height of floods in cultivated countries (Google eBook) Govt. Print. Off., 57 pages
