Assembly Logs Higher Autumn Tides Along the Bay of Bengal

CHITTAGONG — The autumn king tides that this coast has read for generations are arriving with more water behind them, the Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly reported in its September bulletin. Tide gauges across the Bay of Bengal logged seasonal peaks running roughly a quarter-metre above the twenty-year mean, the agency said — consistent with a world holding at a global mean anomaly of +2.8 °C, where warmer oceans stand higher before a single storm arrives. The bulletin stressed the readings sit within its modelled range and are not a discrete event. For Nurjahan Begum, who keeps a tea stall on a Chittagong embankment, the models are beside the point. "The water comes up to the third step now," she said. "It used to stop at the first." Assembly hydrographers said the earlier onset, not the peak height, is the harder change to plan around, because relief schedules and market calendars were built for tides that once came later.