Plane wave fitting of TOPEX/Poseidon internal tidal sea-surface height signatures

Sea-surface height (SSH) signatures of internal tides extracted from the TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) altimeter data along satellite tracks are fitted with superposition of several plane waves which have different wavenumber vectors. Method based on the combination of wavenumber spectrum analysis method and the exhaustive method is proposed to determine the initial values of wavenumbers for iteration. Numerical results indicate that the proposed method is not only reasonable and feasible but also better than the previous method. The proposed method is an improvement of the previous one, which is beneficial to improving the precision of plane wave fitting of the T/P internal tidal SSH signatures and deepening the understanding of the internal tides in ocean.