Tidal Patterns and Energy Balance in the Gulf of California

Abstract

Roden and Groves¹ wrote: “The oceanographic aspects of the Gulf of California, one of the least known marginal seas of the North Pacific, are both interesting and complex”. Tidal processes certainly justify the statement. With a reported spring range of 10 m as well as currents exceeding 6 knots (ref. 2) the tides in the Gulf of California are among the most spectacular and dangerous in the world. Nevertheless, because of the rarity and inadequacy of observations, no consistent picture could be drawn until recently. Many quantitative studies of this area must thus be regarded as provisional; there is, for example, an eight-fold range in estimates of energy dissipation for the semidiurnal lunar tide, namely, Heiskanen^3,4: 2.5×10¹⁷ erg s⁻¹; Miller⁵: 4×10¹⁷ erg s⁻¹; Hendershott⁶: 1 to 2×10¹⁷ erg s⁻¹; and my proposed values: 4.35×10¹⁶ erg s⁻¹ for M₂ alone, 4.65×10¹⁶ erg s⁻¹ for all semidiurnal lunar constituents and 4.85×10¹⁶ erg s⁻¹ for all lunar constituents.