Abstract
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY TIDAL INSTITUTE.—The first annual report of this institute, established in 1919 with funds provided by Sir Alfred and Mr. Charles Booth, gives a brief and interesting account of the work so far taken up under the auspices of Prof. J. Proudman, the honorary director, and Dr. A. T. Doodson, the secretary. Besides theoretical work on the seiches in Lake Geneva and on the dynamical equations of the tides, the study of tide-prediction has been vigorously prosecuted. The official British and American predictions of the tides in the Mersey, calculated by machines of Lord Kelvin's type on the basis of analyses made many years ago by a committee of the British Association, often differ by a foot in height between themselves, and from the actual observed heights by amounts up to 3 ft. Dr. Doodson finds that the predicting machines are susceptible to error, though further examination is necessary to determine whether to an extent which unfits them for use in research. Meanwhile, the institute has embarked on an intensive study of the tides at Newlyn, near Land's End, from the continuous record taken by the Ordnance Survey. This work has also been assisted financially and otherwise by a British Association committee. Analysis has been made by computations on a novel plan; the five most important constituents in the tides were first removed, using approximate values inferred from the results of analyses for neighbouring stations. This reduced the range from 18.5 ft. to 2.5 ft., and disclosed the presence of quarter-diurnal constituents, which also were removed by a method suggested by theoretical considerations. This revealed constituents of higher orders and the presence of some unremoved semidiurnal constituents, as was to be anticipated. By this method the real constituents are discovered, and these alone removed.
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 106, 30 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106030a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106030a0