Simplified empirical astronomical tide model—An application for the Río de la Plata estuary

The Río de la Plata has a complex astronomical tide due to the effect of the shallow depth of this extensive estuary, the complicated geometry and bathymetry and the huge discharge of the rivers Paraná and Uruguay and therefore the simulation of the astronomical tide is complicated. This paper presents a Simplified Empirical Astronomical Tide model (SEAT) which overcomes the foreseen difficulties in a straightforward way. The program developed can be applied to other regions by only changing a file of the dynamic-link library. SEAT provides predictions, harmonic constants and the mean water level referred to the tidal datum used to calculate the prediction. The storage of information in the form of images reduces the size of the application. The equations considered for the prediction do not require the use of special computer processors. A personal computer with minimum hardware that supports Microsoft Framework 3.5 is suitable to run SEAT.

► We develop an empirical tide prediction model for Río de la Plata, Argentina. ► The model is user-friendly and does not require special hardware to run. ► The storage of information in the form of images reduces the size of the program. ► The program can be applied to other regions by changing the dynamic-link library. ► The code is designed to use any combination of 123 selected tide constituents.