We present here a 1/4¿ resolution near-global barotropic tidal model designed specifically to provide more accurate tides in shallow water. The model assimilates tides derived from 4 years of TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P) altimetric data. Procedures are used that tend to preserve the small spatial scales in the tidal structure in shallow water. Data from coastal tide gauges are also assimilated into the model. The result is a tidal model that is useful in most of the shallow and deep areas of the global oceans. Some problems exist in regions where no data are available for assimilation, such as the Southern Ocean. Pelagic tide gauge comparisons show that in deep water the new model is comparable in accuracy to the best of the existing T/P-based global tidal models. Comparisons to crossover differences in shallow water suggest improved performance. We found that more accurate accounting of the load tides in the ocean tide model using an iterative technique based on the Green's function formalism does not yield ocean tides that are significantly different from the simpler approaches used thus far by ocean tide modelers when data are assimilated. It is our hope that this tidal model will not only help advance our understanding of shallow water tidal processes around the globe but also extend the utility of altimetry to waters shallower than 1000 m. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union