Evaluation of Ocean Tide Models Used for Jason-2 Altimetry Corrections

It has been more than a decade since the last comprehensive accuracy assessment of global ocean tide models. Here, we conduct an evaluation of the barotropic ocean tide corrections, which were computed using FES2004 and GOT00.2, and other models on the Jason-2 altimetry Geophysical Data Record (GDR), with a focus on selected coastal regions with energetic ocean dynamics. We compared nine historical and contemporary ocean tide models with pelagic tidal constants and with multiple satellite altimetry mission (T/P, ERS-1/-2, Envisat, GFO, Jason-1/-2) sea level anomalies using variance reduction studies. All accuracy assessment methods show consistent results. We conclude that all the contemporary ocean tide models evaluated have similar performance in the selected coastal regions. However, their accuracies are region-dependent and overall are significantly worse than those in the deep-ocean, which are at the 2–3 cm RMS (root-mean-square) level. The Gulf of Mexico and Northwest Atlantic regions present the least reduction of altimetry sea surface height variability after ocean tides are removed, primarily because of large oceanic variability associated with loop currents in the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Stream in the Northwest Atlantic.