ABSTRACT
Like most fields of science over the past century or two, the subject of oceanic tides appears to have progressed through a few major phases that, in hindsight at least, can be readily identified. When observing tides with a satellite altimeter, the problem of aliasing can scarcely be avoided. There is an underlying pattern to the tidal aliasing for any satellite, and to understand this it is helpful to return to basic aliasing concepts. Some tidal aliasing problems, especially those involving mapping the broad-scale barotropic tides, can be mitigated somewhat by combining the additional phase observations from neighboring tracks or from ascending and descending tracks. One area where great progress has been made since the Le Provost review concerns the energetics and dissipation of the barotropic tide. Internal or baroclinic tides are internal gravity waves with tidal periodicity. They are generated by the interaction of barotropic tides with bottom topography.
