A
tide table, sometimes called a
tide chart, is used for
tidal predictionTides are the rises and falls of sea level caused by the combined effect of rotation of the Earth and the gravitation of the Moon and the Sun. The tides occur with a period of approximately 12 and a half hours and are influenced by the shape of the near-shore bottom.Most coastal areas experience...
and shows the daily times and height of
high waterHigh Water is an album by hip hop artist El-P, released on March 9, 2004 through Thirsty Ear Recordings.Made in conjunction with jazz pianist Matthew Shipp and the group for which he is artistic director, The Blue Series Continuum, the album is a striking departure from El-P's usual style, almost...
and low water for a particular location. Tide heights at intermediate times (between high and low water) can be approximately calculated using the
rule of twelfthsThe Rule of Twelfths is a rule of thumb for estimating the height of the tide at any time, given only the time and height of high and low water...
or more accurately by using a published tidal curve for the port.
Tide tables are published as small booklets in their own right, as part of
nautical almanacA nautical almanac is a publication describing the positions of a selection of celestial bodies for the purpose of enabling navigators to use celestial navigation to determine the position of their ship while at sea...
s, on the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, in some
newspaperA newspaper is a publication containing news, information, and advertising. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on political events, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing columns that express the...
s (generally those serving readers in coastal regions or having maritime interests), as a QuickTide (TM), and as the output of tidal prediction software.
Tide tables are only calculated and published for major commercial
port||-||-||-||-||-||-||-||-|}A port is a facility for receiving ships and/or transferring cargo. It is usually found at the edge of an ocean, sea, river, or lake. The best ports have deep water in channels or berths, and protection from the wind and waves...
s called standard ports.
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A
tide table, sometimes called a
tide chart, is used for
tidal predictionTides are the rises and falls of sea level caused by the combined effect of rotation of the Earth and the gravitation of the Moon and the Sun. The tides occur with a period of approximately 12 and a half hours and are influenced by the shape of the near-shore bottom.Most coastal areas experience...
and shows the daily times and height of
high waterHigh Water is an album by hip hop artist El-P, released on March 9, 2004 through Thirsty Ear Recordings.Made in conjunction with jazz pianist Matthew Shipp and the group for which he is artistic director, The Blue Series Continuum, the album is a striking departure from El-P's usual style, almost...
and low water for a particular location. Tide heights at intermediate times (between high and low water) can be approximately calculated using the
rule of twelfthsThe Rule of Twelfths is a rule of thumb for estimating the height of the tide at any time, given only the time and height of high and low water...
or more accurately by using a published tidal curve for the port.
Tide tables are published as small booklets in their own right, as part of
nautical almanacA nautical almanac is a publication describing the positions of a selection of celestial bodies for the purpose of enabling navigators to use celestial navigation to determine the position of their ship while at sea...
s, on the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, in some
newspaperA newspaper is a publication containing news, information, and advertising. General-interest newspapers often feature articles on political events, crime, business, art/entertainment, society and sports. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing columns that express the...
s (generally those serving readers in coastal regions or having maritime interests), as a QuickTide (TM), and as the output of tidal prediction software.
Tide tables are only calculated and published for major commercial
port||-||-||-||-||-||-||-||-|}A port is a facility for receiving ships and/or transferring cargo. It is usually found at the edge of an ocean, sea, river, or lake. The best ports have deep water in channels or berths, and protection from the wind and waves...
s called standard ports. The tides for nearby minor ports can be calculated by time and height differences between a "standard" port and these minor ports.
The dates of spring tides and neap tides, approximately seven days apart, can be determined by the heights of the tides on the tide table: a small range indicates neaps and large indicates springs.
On the Atlantic coast of northwest
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
, the interval between each low and high tide averages about 6 hours and 10 minutes, giving two high tides and two low tides each day.
Since 1999, the three innovative patented annually-printed QuickTide (TM) cards predict tides for two years for the UK, Ireland and the Atlantic coast from Belgium to Gibraltar
without calculations to correct for coastal displacement and local daylight-saving time.
Tide prediction was long beset by the problem of laborious calculations; and in earlier times, before the use of digital computers, official tide tables were often generated by the use of a special-purpose analog computer, the
tide-predicting machineA tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which change in mixtures of rhythms, that never repeat...
.
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