Tidal Constituents in the Shallow Waters of the Southwest Indian Coast

Abstract

A two-dimensional hydrodynamic model was set up and validated for the west coast of India. The spatio-temporal variation of the tidal constituents for a 110 km stretch of the southwest coast of India was then studied by setting up a fine grid model. The study brings out variability in the shallow water constituents and their selective amplification. Within the Cochin estuary, the amplitudes of almost all the major tidal constituents show a gradual reduction upstream compared to other locations. The shallow water constituents show significant amplification and Z0, the constituent related to mean sea level shows five-fold amplification within the estuary.

Keywords:

• Shallow water
• tidal constituents
• overtides
• compound tides
• southwest Indian coast

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to Dr. M. Baba, Director, CESS, for all the support and encouragement. Dr. T. S. Murty, University of Ottawa, is thanked for the guidance in this work and very useful discussions. Part of the work was done during the tenure of a project on Shoreline Management funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and coordinated by the ICMAM project Directorate. Thanks are due to Drs. B. R. Subramanian and M. V. Ramana Murthy for all the support extended for the work.