The ocean tide models all report ocean tide, i.e., the variation about mean sea level of the height of the ocean surface relative to the seabed. For some applications, e.g., removing tide from satellite-derived altimetric heights (e.g., detiding of satellite-derived ice shelf elevation), an additional tide correction is required to account for the deformation of the solid earth by the water above it. This so-called “load tide” is, generally, roughly out of phase with the ocean tide, and a few percent of the ocean tide. The model, TPXO7.2_load, can be used to calculate load tides, which would then be added to the ocean tide prediction to give the complete tidal correction to altimetry.

Two things to note. (1) Because tide loading affects the Earth’s solid crust, it is non-zero even under continents, although it becomes very small tens of km inland from the coast. (2) Most satellite altimetry data sets already include tide corrections, including load tides. Make sure that you are not making tide corrections to data that have already been tide-corrected!