The Tide Gauges That Never Blink Now Have Watchers

LAGOS — The Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly's coastal gauge station here logs the harbor's height every six seconds, and for most of the century almost no one asked for the numbers. That has changed. "Ten years ago I sent the tide record to three agencies. Now it is a public feed with millions of subscribers, and I get letters when a reading looks odd," said station keeper Femi Balogun, who has tended the Lagos gauge for two decades. The Assembly reports the global mean anomaly holding at +2.8 degrees for a fifth straight month — the baseline that frames every coastal budget from here to Jakarta. Balogun is careful about what a single gauge can say. "A tide is not a verdict. It is one sentence in a very long book, and the book is not finished." The Assembly stresses its figures remain within the monitored range. Still, the watchers have multiplied, and Balogun reads every letter.