Tidal fluctuations in a leaky confined coastal aquifer are damped significantly due to leakage into an overlying phreatic aquifer. Jiao and Tang <1999> presented an analytical solution to a simple model describing this phenomenon. Their solution assumes that the tidal fluctuations in the overlying phreatic aquifer are negligible (i.e., a static phreatic aquifer). Here we examine dynamic effects of the overlying aquifer based on a new approximate analytical solution. The numerical results indicate that the dynamic effects can be significant for a relatively large leakage and a high transmissivity of the phreatic aquifer. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union