Analysis and prediction of ocean tides by the computer program VAV

The paper presents various results from the application of VAV tidal analysis program on a 36 years (7/01/1945–31/12/1980) series of ocean data from the Belgian port Ostend. The program VAV was originally developed for the processing of Earth tide data. Now, it has been supplied with specific options for the analysis of ocean tide data. One of the new options is the determination of the shallow water tides. VAV is also able to make ocean tide predictions, as well as to investigate the mean sea level and its long-term trend. Generally, useful properties of VAV are a correct application of the Method of the Least Squares, taking into account the colored character of the noise, as well as its ability to process data with gaps, without any interpolation.