UKC

Can anyone tell me where I can find the UK 2020 tide tables. I'm trying to plan a few sea cliff climbing trips in the UK that year and can't find the tables anywhere online. I usually use the excellent Climbers Club website but that only shows up to 2019 currently. Are the free tables released on a certain date each year? Is there a way of calculating the tides given info from the 2019 tables?

http://www.ukho.gov.uk/easytide/EasyTide/index.aspx

should work. Remember daylight saving too.

In general, I think you need to pay for anything that goes beyond the next 6-10 days. Either by a subscription to one of the online services or by buying a paper book of tide times. Its not really realistic to do this yourself I don't think as it depends on modelling/ predicting the motions and interactions of the sun, moon, other planets. Hence the (very minimal) cost if you want a long range forecast.

I've just had a look at the CC website and I'm assuming that somebody has sat down and worked out the High & Low water times for those limited set of locations from tide tables which have been purchased. Good to have from a climbing perspective if it covers your area of interest. 

As already mentioned, you usually have to pay for predictions which aren't in the near future. 

Perhaps a local library could help?

Mehmet

I've just tried registering and it seems you have to pay for the forecasts more than 7 days ahead. 

This website gets used by a local climbing club to give tides a long way ahead. Might be worth a look?

https://tides.mobilegeographics.com/locations/6900.html?y=2020&m=3&...

I tried an average hourly change model based on a months worth of free data. This approach failed massively. It was about four hours out within two months.

http://thetidalpress.com/buy-tide-tables/

Yes, the 'estimate' that works for a few days is approx 12h 25 mins between tides. But there is a lot of variation depending on the moon phase. Its goes out pretty quick though .  

The android apps I use are. 

Absolute tides (paid for  subs about £4 per annum)

Tide Prediction. (free, but fewer locales to choose from, but will do next year quite happily )

I'm amazed how good my casio watch is, but it's only dividing the tide into about 6 segments, so ~2 hours each. That works on lat/long, moon phase and lunar-tidal interval (time from moon over head to high tide) ... 

magicseaweed

or one of the many handy phone apps

In order to make accurate tidal height/ time predictions, you have to run a harmonic analysis using data from tidal observations.  In the UK only the UKHO do this, and they own the data (and charge for it).  Free predictions are much more approximate.  Comparing the prediction on the CC website to the UKHO predictions, for example, shows that they are anywhere between 1/2 an hour to 45 mins out.  When you add in the fact that climbing locations may be a significant distance from ports where predictions are made, you could be out by quite a bit.

If you are only interested in approximate times, then it is useful to know that in any given location, spring tides always occur at approximately the same time of day, and these are in turn related to the phase of the moon. Spring tides in the UK occur approximately 2 days after new/ full moons as this is the time it takes for the tidal wave to travel from the southern ocean to the N Atlantic.  Thus if you find lunar tables for 2020, you can make a reasonable guess at the tide times by relating them to current tidal predictions (or even your own observations for a particular location that is along way from a standard or secondary port).

From my understanding tide predictions can be a little out depending on weather anyway  so you always have to allow some variation anyway.

Do you know typically how close actual high tide is compared to predicted? In guessing there is less variation in settled summwr weather compared to a stormy winter day... 

Great suggestions guys, thank you for all the ideas - I'll have a look into them. I particularly like the idea of the apps. Yes it certainly looks like you have to pay for anything more than a 6 day prediction. Think I've just been fortunate in the past with someone at the CC working out the tide times but have taken note that these may not be 100% accurate. A friend has also found this app: Imray Tides Planner.

Did you realise that tide prediction tables are precisely that? They are predictions only. That's because of unpredictable variables such as atmospheric pressure, wind direction, wind strength, surface water run off etc.

High Tide will still be High Tide though as it's determined essentially by the moon.
Yes, there might be variations due to local conditions such as wind direction, etc. but the actual tide conditions can probably be calculated for any part of the world for many thousands of years to come.

www.tides.digimap.gg go all the way to the end of 2022. You'll get the times for St.Peter Port from there. With that info you can consult a nautical almanac to find out the time of HW at Dover, from which you can then find out the times at the nearest 'standard ports' to where you want to go.

Alternatively, the times of high waters run on a fortnightly cycle with the moon. For example, in Guernsey, spring tides (full or new moon periods) always have a low water between 12 & 3pm-ish, the time getting later by about 45 minute each day. Neap tides always have high water at those times. So if you can find out the moon phase and look at the tidal information you can find for free, you can get an idea of what the tide will be doing on the dates you're interested in.

I was faced with the same issue searching for tide times and ranges for Lundy in 2020 (perhaps that's your question too). I took two approaches. First I checked the phases of the moon (which are freely available for 2020 - indeed I think you can get them for 3020) and assumed the tide times and ranges are approximately the same each lunar month at the same phase of the moon. To be a little more accurate I compared August 2018 (when we were there) with August 2020. Obviously the same dates will have different tides, but a full moon date within that period in 2018 should have similar tides to the closest full moon date in 2020.

I then panicked and paid £10 to get the Admiralty tides for 2020. Obviously I compared the two methods. My estimates were out by varying amounts during the month but not by more than an hour. So the estimates were sufficiently accurate to determine which weeks were best for Lundy, though not sufficiently accurate to decide whether to abseil into Headline in Arch Zawn at 14.30 on 26 August 2020.

Martin

Xtide harmonics files based on UK  observations used to be available, but were withdrawn about 5 years ago when someone decided it was better to charge for predictions.

Some people might still have the old files, but obviously couldn't use or distribute them 

Longer ago than I remembered.  Weird as I am sure I wasn't using xtide in 2001!

https://flaterco.com/xtide/faq.html#60

I use the Absolute Tides app for sea kayaking. A year’s tide info for the whole of the UK costs £3 or £4. I think this is good value considering how good the app is. However they don’t yet have the 2020 data available 

there's an App for Android Tides Near Me and UK Tides, but not sure if they are limited in how far in the future it works

There used to be a ride app for the Psion. IIRC, it used data released by the French, which was free.