Saturday, June 23, 2007

Tide

Tides are the cyclic rising and falling of Earth's ocean surface caused by the tidal forces of the Moon and the sun acting on the oceans. Tides cause changes in the depth of the marine and estuarine water bodies and produce oscillating currents known as tidal streams, making prediction of tides important for coastal navigation. The strip of seashore that is submerged at high tide and exposed at low tide, the intertidal zone, is an important ecological product of ocean tides
The changing tide produced at a given location is the result of the changing positions of the Moon and Sun relative to the Earth coupled with the effects of Earth rotation and the local bathymetry.Sea level measured by coastal tide gauges may also be strongly affected by wind. More generally, tidal phenomena can occur in other systems besides the ocean, whenever a gravitational field that varies in time and space is present

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