Background: see Chapter 11 of the book.

In research articles published ~50 years ago, Richard Lindzen made these assertions:

“For oscillations of tidal periods, the nature of the forcing is clear”

Lindzen, Richard S. “Planetary waves on beta-planes.” Mon. Wea. Rev 95.7 (1967): 441-451.

and

“5. Lunar semidiurnal tide

One rationale for studying tides is that they are motion systems for which we know the periods perfectly, and the forcing almost as well (this is certainly the case for gravitational tides). Thus, it is relatively easy to isolate tidal phenomena in the data, to calculate tidal responses in the atmosphere, and to compare the two. Briefly, conditions for comparing theory and observation are relatively ideal. Moreover, if theory is incapable of explaining observations for such a simple system, we may plausibly be concerned with our ability to explain more complicated systems.

Lunar tides are especially well suited to such studies since it is unlikely that lunar periods could be produced by anything other than the lunar tidal potential. “

Lindzen, R.S. and Hong, S.S., 1974. “Effects of mean winds and horizontal temperature gradients on solar and lunar semidiurnal tides in the atmosphere“. Journal of the atmospheric sciences, 31(5), pp.1421-1446.

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