The Patagonian Shelf tides

The Patagonian Shelf tides constitute one of the strongest regimes, among the biggest in the world, where a significant amount of global tidal energy is dissipated by the effect of bottom friction. In this paper, the tidal response of the Patagonian Shelf is described by means of information generated by a numerical model, and computations of energy fluxes and dissipation rates are presented. Since measurements of tidal elevations and currents on the Patagonian Shelf are scarce and mostly limited to coastal locations, the information obtained from the model offers valuable insight in a region where a detailed description was not available, particularly in the context of global tidal modelling. The tidal regime on the Patagonian Shelf is dominated by the principal lunar semidiurnal tide, M-2, with contributions from other semidiurnal, diurnal and fourth-diurnal constituents. This regional study shows that dissipation is highly localized, and that the integrated value of the dissipation rate over the model domain constitutes a significant fraction of the estimated global dissipation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.