Extension of the anyTide app

Access to accurate tidal information is essential for all users of the maritime sector as it facilitates more effective planning of maritime activities (ports and harbour operations, fishing) and enhances safety of lives at sea (enabling warnings to be issued for spring tides and tide plus storm surge risk etc). Information about tidal currents can also enable ships to save fuel and time, while the improved capacity to forecast storm surge events driven by meteorological events in remote islands also has significant financial and human safety value.

Stakeholder engagement conducted through the CME Programme identified that no tidal products equivalent to the anyTide app (which at that point was only available for the UK/NW European shelf) existed in the Pacific region, despite many maritime users having access to smart phones. This project consequently facilitated the development of an updated global version of the app that enables users to access instant free comprehensive tide information for over 1000 coastal points worldwide. The service combines observational tidal data from tide gauges that are part of the Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis (GESLA) network, and the ability to easily serve data from the most up to date NOC global tidal dataset. This new dataset in particular presents a novel methodology to efficiently blend model and observations to produce tidal height and current predictions in both coastal and open marine environments.

Outputs

This project facilitated the development and release of a tidal prediction service accessible through a smart phone app in order to increase access to simple tidal prediction services across the beneficiary regions. The app is provided free and provides the following key services:

• Tidal predictions at tide gauge locations using measured data
• Tidal predictions at all coastal locations (every ~10km) using a data assimilating numerical model
• Tidal current predictions at all marine locations using a data assimilating numerical model
• Offline capability

Publications

• Creation of a Global Tide Analysis Dataset: Application of NEMO and an offline Objective Analysis Scheme. Byrne, Polton, Bell (In Review). Journal of Operational Oceanography

Countries supported

All programme countries