OCEAN-LOAD TIDES AT THE SOUTH-POLE - A VALIDATION OF RECENT OCEAN-TIDE MODELS

Small diurnal and semidiurnal gravity tides are seen at the South Pole because of the loading by and attraction of the ocean tides. These data provide a check on the quality of ocean-tide models, especially in the southernmost ocean, which has historically been the most lacking in tidal data. Ocean-tide models developed in the 1980's did not predict the gravity tides at this location very well. Recently-developed models based on the Topex/Poseidon altimetric data and improved hydrodynamical modeling agree much better with the observations, provided that the tides beneath the ice shelves are included. The level of agreement at this remote location suggests that, loads from very local tides aside, the new generation of ocean-tide models can predict the loading tides to very high accuracy.