The response of sea level to tide, atmospheric pressure, wind forcing, and river discharge in the Kitimat Fjord System (KFS) is investigated by using observations from tide gauges and results from a high-resolution ocean circulation model. Tidal harmonic analysis of the observed hourly sea level at the head and mouth of Douglas Channel shows that the largest semidiurnal tide (M₂) alone accounts for 79% of the total sea level variance, and the top four major tidal constituents (M₂, S₂, K₁, and O₁) account for 94% of the total variance. In addition, the amplitude of M₂ increases slightly from 1.586 to 1.647 m between the mouth and the head. For the observed subtidal sea level, the local inverse barometer response due to the variation of atmospheric pressure accounts for 59% of the variance. The variation of subtidal sea level difference between the mouth and the head of Douglas Channel is observable and can be largely attributed to the along-channel wind (54%) with an additional 13% of the variation due to the daily-averaged and seasonal-cumulative river discharges.

A fjord-shelf three-dimensional ocean circulation model for KFS is developed to simulate the sea level variability. The model performance in simulating the sea level is assessed by comparing model results with observed harmonic constituents of ~70 tidal stations inside the model domain and time series recorded at the two tide gauges of KFS. The modelled tides are in good agreement with observations with a domain-averaged root-mean-square error estimate of ~0.04 m for M₂. For the subtidal sea level, the model is able to capture the observed synoptic variations. Further analysis suggests that the underestimates of subtidal sea level in the ocean circulation model are mainly due to the weaker-than-observed wind forcing taken from the atmospheric model especially during the peak of strong down-fjord katabatic wind events.

通过使用潮汐仪的观测资料和高分辨率海洋环流模型的结果，研究了基蒂马特峡湾系统（KFS）中海平面对潮汐，大气压力，风力和河流流量的响应。潮汐谐波分析对道格拉斯海峡口岸和每小时观测到的每小时海平面显示，最大的半日潮（M ₂）单独占总海平面变化的79％，而顶部的四个主要潮汐成分（M ₂， S ₂，K ₁和O ₁）占总方差的94％。另外，M ₂的振幅嘴与头之间的距离从1.586略微增加到1.647 m。对于观测到的潮下海平面，由于气压变化而引起的局部逆气压计响应占变化的59％。道格拉斯海峡口与头之间的潮下海平面差异的变化是可以观察到的，并且在很大程度上可以归因于沿岸风（54％），另外13％的变化是由于日平均和季节性变化造成的。累积河道流量。

建立了峡湾-陆架式三维海洋环流模型，以模拟海平面的变化。通过将模型结果与模型域内〜70个潮汐站的观测谐波分量和在KFS的两个潮汐仪上记录的时间序列进行比较，来评估模型在模拟海平面上的性能。建模的潮汐与观测值高度吻合，M ₂的域平均均方根误差估计为〜0.04 m。对于潮下海平面，该模型能够捕获观测到的天气变化。进一步的分析表明，海洋环流模型中潮汐海平面的低估主要是由于从大气模型中获取的风强迫弱于观测到的，特别是在强烈的下峡湾卡塔特风事件高峰期。