Ocean Tides

Abstract

WHILE not considering myself qualified to question the gain to scientific knowledge on the theoretical side which might accrue from the investigation of ocean tides, such as Prof. Proudman suggested in his article in NATURE of April 7, p. 176, I yet venture the opinion that for practical, utilitarian purposes co-ordinated study of the tidal phenomena at coastal observatories would be of greater value. The official predictions, based on extended local observations, attain such a remarkable degree of accuracy that the error is, in what we may term by courtesy normal weather, negligible. The trouble is that it is the unexpected, in the form of wind and barometrical change at critical times, that happens, and we have no formulæ at hand with which to apply corrections to predictions.