Astronomers and Earth scientists refer to these plus-sized tides as spring tides.
BAY OF FUNDY TIDE GRAPH FULL
He notes that this happens during two separate lunar phases: Full moons and new moons.
![bay of fundy tide graph bay of fundy tide graph](http://www.gpsnauticalcharts.com/static_html/nautical_charts_app/nautical_chart_images/CA4011_1.jpg)
when the sun and moon line up," Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, says in an email. Still, the big ball of gas and plasma does noticeably enhance tidal bulges on a regular basis. The sun also exerts a gravitational pull on the oceans, but because our solar companion is further away, its effects on the tides are less pronounced than the moon's. This isn't always the case, as you'll learn next.įor now, let's discuss another factor that influences our tides. But as it enters the space between the bulges, the tide in your area should get lower. So - in most areas - when your home is directly under a bulge, the local tide should be high. During this process, any given spot on the planet's surface (like, say, Long Island or Australia) will pass right through both of those ocean bulges. Once every 24 hours, Earth completes a full rotation around its axis. This is why the ocean bulges up over those two areas. Those four areas are unique in that regard every other location on Earth experiences a horizontal force that pushes water molecules in the ocean toward either the sublunar point (where the moon's gravitational force is at its strongest) or the antipodal point (where the moon's gravitational pull is at its weakest). At the sublunar point and the antipodal point, the moon's gravitational pull lacks a horizontal component - something that is also missing at the two corners of the world that are located 90 degrees away from these spots. It's no coincidence that the ocean bulges are highest right over those two spots.
![bay of fundy tide graph bay of fundy tide graph](https://thenatureseeker.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/bay-of-fundy-map.png)
Meanwhile, the spot on the other side of our planet that is directly opposite the sublunar point is known as the antipodal point. Now, the spot on the globe that sits right beneath the moon at any given time is called the sublunar point. And it can also pull things "horizontally" - i.e.: in a direction that runs parallel to the face of our planet. It can pull matter "vertically," by which we mean perpendicularly to the Earth's surface. That force can have two separate components. Why do these bulges exist? In a nutshell, they're primarily caused by the moon's gravitational pull upon the Earth.