Trends and the pole tide in Indian tidegauge records

Abstract

This paper studies tidegauge records of stations on the Indian coastline. An analysis of trends did not reveal a monotonie trend. Trends were seen for limited periods at only five of the eight stations on the Indian coast. A spectral analysis of annual records produced evidence of long period cycles with shorter cycles riding on them. The shorter cycles had a period of 5.0 years. The spectra of monthly records revealed evidence of a pole tide and an annual cycle. The amplitude of the pole tide was estimated to be around 7.5 mm. This was larger than the equilibrium tide. A spectral analysis of monthly rainfall at Bombay, a station on the Indian west coast, also showed a 13.9 month cycle and a (3,1,0) autoregressive model. But the coherence between monthly rainfall and relative sealevel fluctuations was low.