The Lunar Atmospheric Tide as Revealed by Meteorological Data

Abstract

The lunar atmospheric tide, whose existence was recognized by Newton, was studied by Laplace, as indicated in Chapter 1, both theoretically, and from barometric observations. His attempt to determine it from eight years’ observations, made four times daily at unequal intervals at the Paris observatory, was unsuccessful; he used only 4752 such readings, and after considering the probable error of the result he got, he decided that it was unreliable. Bouvard (1827) extended Laplace’s calculations by including another four years’ data, making twelve years in all, January 1, 1815 to January 1, 1827; from 8940 readings his result was an amplitude of 0.0176 mm, with maxima at 2h 8m and 14h 8m of lunar mean time. The great difference between this and Laplace’s amplitude, 0.054 mm, confirmed Laplace’s conclusion that the data were too few (in both cases) to provide a reliable result.