Tidal Loading on the Italian Peninsula

Summary The M2 load tide (gravity, tilt, strain) is computed for six sites in the Italian peninsula using Green functions. Three radially stratified selfgravitating elastic models of Alpine structures are considered. Convolution is performed on oceans and Mediterranean basins. It is shown that gravity measurements in the peninsula cannot give significant contributions to the determination of marine tide and that tilt and strain measurements can help the study of crustal structure, provided improvements in the experimental and data processing techniques are achieved. In an Appendix we try to give a theoretical explanation of tilt at the Grotta Gigante station (Trieste, Italy) using the above mentioned elastic models.