Explore the Daily Change of Worldwide Tides

The Earth's ocean tides are generated by the gravitational forces from the Sun and the Moon and the Earth's rotation. The most important effect is the gravitational pull from the Moon, which is described by the so-called "principal lunar semidiurnal constituent", . This example simulates the tides created by that effect.

Take a list of of triples , based on satellite data, for a rectangular grid of geo positions across the whole world.

Compute tide elevation values for Jan 1, 2001, at intervals of 1 hour.

The function TideData performs the computation for a given value of .

Construct a contour plot of water levels for each of the 25 instants of time.

Animate those contour plots, showing tide oscillations for a full day. Blue-tone colors represent low tides and red-tone colors represent high tides.