Tides and storm surges are among the most fundamental drivers of variability in the open ocean and along coasts, linking short-term hazards to long-term Earth system change. Together, they are the principal cause of coastal flooding. Tides and surges interact with mean sea level, waves, morphodynamics, river flow, and human infrastructure, shaping sediment transport, pollutant dispersal, coastal ecosystems, and navigation. Barotropic and internal tides supply mechanical energy to ocean mixing with consequences for stratification, nutrient transport, marine biogeochemistry, and large-scale ocean circulation. Tidal processes also interact directly with cryospheric systems, e.g., modulating ice-shelf flexure and grounding-line dynamics.
Both tides and storm surges evoke substantial ocean and Earth System variability on timescales ranging from minutes to centuries and are increasingly affected by sea-level rise, climate change, sea-ice loss, and local interventions such as dredging, land reclamation, and estuarine engineering. These changes have implications for flood risk, ecological processes, tidal energy resource assessments, and ocean mixing and circulation. Within geodetic observations (e.g., GNSS, altimetry, gravimetry), tidal and storm-surge signatures are pervasive and encode diagnostics of a wide range of Earth system parameters, thereby making them accessible. On geological timescales, shifts in continental configuration, ocean bathymetry, and sea level have profoundly reshaped tidal dynamics, with cascading effects on circulation, mixing, and even evolutionary processes.
This session welcomes contributions that use in situ observations, remote sensing, numerical and data-driven models, and geological/paleo-reconstructions to advance understanding of tide- and/or surge-driven processes, their broader implications for coastal, ocean, and Earth system dynamics, and applications to tidal energy, navigation, and beyond. We invite submissions spanning regional to global scales, past, present, and future perspectives, and settings ranging from estuaries and rivers to the open ocean and other planetary bodies.