Solar and Lunar Tides in the MLT

Abstract

Simulations were done in Matlab to see how many days of data is needed to get accurate values of solar and lunar semidiurnal tides amplitudes and phases. For the component dominating the signal, 4 days can be sufficient, but the smaller component would need on the order of 100 days to be trusted. Using the same fitting algorithm on real data from the Falkland Islands SuperDARN radar, it is clear that 4 days of data is not enough to separate the solar and lunar semidiurnal tide because of too much noise, and 14 days give better results.